4 


Z 733 
US M18 
1947 

Copy 1 



The Reorganization of the Library of 
Congress, 1939-44* 


ARCHIBALD MacLEISH 


y 7- 

HIS paper, being a library paper, 
should begin with a warning to 
the cataloger. The author is not Archi¬ 
bald MacLeish, though the by-line says 
so. The author is the Library of Con¬ 
gress. It would be almost impossible 
for the most gifted and persistent cata¬ 
loger on earth, even though a member of 
the Library’s staff (which she certainly 
would be), to identify the occasional 
sentences I have borrowed from the re¬ 
ports of my colleagues—Mr. Clapp, or 
Mr. Mearns, or Dr. Evans, or Mr. Henkle, 
or Dr. Hanke, or Mr. Rogers, or Mrs. 
Wright, perhaps, or other members of the 
Library’s staff. The reorganization of 
the Library of Congress was a labor in 
common of many men and women, and 
this account of it is such a labor also. If 
the general orders and other documents 
in which the Library’s organization was 
accomplished and expressed- were gener¬ 
ally in my words, it was not because the 
work was necessarily mine but rather 
because, being a writer rather than a 
librarian, I prefer the sound of my own 
phrases. If the manuscript of this paper 
is largely in my handwriting, it is merely 
because mine were the last hands through 
which it passed. 

I insist on this not out of modesty but 
out of pride. Of the various changes 
accomplished in my five-year term, I am 
proudest of the change which has drawn 

* Reprinted, 1947, from The Library Quarterly, Vol. 
XIV, No. 4 , October 1944, published by the Univer¬ 
sity of Chicago Press. 


into the active administration of the 
Library of Congress an increasing num¬ 
ber of the members of its staff. A depart¬ 
ment of government is efficiently run when 
it is run by every man and woman in it, 
each directing the work he has to do, 
whether that work is done by many or 
by one, and that one himself. The 
Library of Congress has not yet achieved 
that ideal; but the professional forum, 
the staff advisory committee, the various 
operating committees, and the Librarian’s 
Conference have carried it a long way 
forward. I could ask no greater assur¬ 
ance for the future welfare of the Library 
than its continuing development of these 
instruments and others like them. 

But if the author of this paper is not 
what he seems, neither is the paper. It 
calls itself “The Reorganization of the 
Library of Congress, 1939-44.” The im¬ 
plication is that the new Librarian of 
Congress, having just heard himself cer¬ 
tified by the American Library Asso¬ 
ciation as no librarian, took one look at 
the world’s largest library and proceeded 
to reconstruct it from the ground up. 
Nothing of the kind, I need hardly say, 
happened, I did hot set out to reorganize 
the Library of Congress, any more than 
I had set out to become its Librarian. 
The American ..Library Association was 
quite right. I knew nothing about library 
administration as such in 1939. To be 
entirely frank, I am not sure that I know 
much more about it today, for I am even 
more doubtful now than I was then that 



726178—47 - 1 


1 






2 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


the administration of a library differs 
essentially from the administration of 
any other organization in which highly 
developed skills and highly developed 
personalities are combined in a highly 
complicated undertaking. 

What actually happened in 1939 and 
1940 and thereafter was merely this: 
that one problem or another would de¬ 
mand action; that to take action it would 
become necessary to consider the effect 
of the proposed action on related situa¬ 
tions; that related situations had, in turn, 
their related situations; and that eventu¬ 
ally it would prove simpler to change 
several things than to change one. 

The reason will be obvious to anyone 
familiar with the Library as it then was. 
The Library of Congress in 1939 was not 
so much an organization in its own right 
as the lengthened shadow of a man—a 
man of great force, extraordinary abil¬ 
ities, and a personality which left its 
fortunate impress upon everything he 
touched. Only a man of Herbert Put¬ 
nam’s remarkable qualities could have 
administered an institution of the size of 
the Library of Congress by direct and 
personal supervision of all its operations, 
and only he if his administration were 
based upon the intimate familiarities of 
forty years. To succeed Mr. Putnam—if 
one may speak of succeeding a man who 
did not have, and never could have had, 
a successor in the accurate sense of that 
term—to succeed Mr. Putnam was a good 
deal like inheriting an enormous house at 
Stockbridge or Bar Harbor from a wise, 
well-loved, strong-minded, charming and 
particular uncle who knew where every¬ 
thing was and how everything worked and 
what everyone could do but had left no 
indications in his will. 

My first reaction to the Library of 
Congress—and my last may well be the 
same—was the conviction that I owed it 
to my successor to leave him an organi¬ 
zation with a momentum of its own. 


The principal difficulty with the old 
Library, from my point of view as the un¬ 
expected and unexpectant heir, was the 
fact that the whole fabric depended from 
the Librarian as the miraculous archi¬ 
tecture of the paper wasp hangs from a 
single anchor. There was the Librarian— 
myself—in his vaulted office with his 
messenger outside. There was the chief 
assistant librarian, the late regretted 
Martin Roberts, in a room across the 
hall, his desk piled with order slips and 
vouchers. There was the office of the 
secretary of the Library—for neither the 
Librarian nor the chief assistant librarian 
had a full-time secretary of his own. And 
below these two, dependent on them for 
immediate supervision and direction, were 
thirty-five different and separate adminis¬ 
trative units engaging in activities as vari¬ 
ous and diverse as the administration of the 
national copyright laws, the conduct of 
chamber-music concerts, the procurement 
of talking books for the adult blind, the 
cataloging of books, the care of the Library 
buildings, the provision of reference and 
research service to the Congress, the publi¬ 
cation and sale of cards to other libraries, 
the purchase of library materials, the 
service of manuscripts and rare books and 
prints to readers, the recruiting of per¬ 
sonnel, and the provision of learned in¬ 
formation in most of the languages of the 
world to readers everywhere. 

The so-called. Librarian’s Committee 
(Messrs. Joeckel, Rice, and Osborn) 
which examined the Library at my re¬ 
quest a few months after my appoint¬ 
ment described this situation in the chill 
vocabulary of the science of management 
by calling it 

in all probability the largest and most diffused 
span of control to be found in any American 
library . . . Small wonder that the Library of 
Congress is often described as a group of li¬ 
braries within a library. It is in effect a loose 
federation of principalities, each with strongly 
developed traditions and with administrative 
and technical idiosyncrasies. . . . There can be 


3 


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REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF 

little doubt that the steady expansion of the 
number of independent organization units is in 
large measure responsible for many of the pres¬ 
ent difficulties in technical operations as well 
as in administration of the Library. Almost of 
necessity, each division has made its own de¬ 
cisions as to the technical apparatus of cata¬ 
logs, shelffists and indexes it has devised and as 
to its relations to the processing operations of 
the rest of the Library. It is not surprising that 
a considered program for the institution as a 
whole has not been developed. 

At the beginning, needless to say, 
there was no question in my mind of “a 
considered program for the institution as 
a whole.” There was merely the ques¬ 
tion of survival. Every personnel action, 
every voucher, every book order, and 
much of the Library’s correspondence, 
except for the most routine communica¬ 
tions, required in theory the Librarian’s 
signature. Since I have a constitutional 
disinclination to signing documents I 
do not know to be right, and since the 
Librarian in his painted vault had no 
possible means of knowing whether the 
greater part of the papers he was ex¬ 
pected to sign were correct or not, the 
situation was difficult—not to say down¬ 
right impossible. Knowledge was sepa¬ 
rated from responsibility, and responsi¬ 
bility from knowledge. Signatures which 
should have been substantial authentica¬ 
tions had become mere formalities. Be¬ 
cause the fiscal officers of the Library, 
like the Library’s great disbursing officer, 
the late Wade H. Rabbitt, were men of 
conscience, industry, and skill, the Li¬ 
brary’s accounts were in good shape; but 
the officer who so declared them over his 
signature had no means of knowing that 
they* were without turning himself into a 
chief clerk or accountant. 

The practice would have been un¬ 
satisfactory anywhere. In the Library 
of Congress it was entirely unacceptable. 
The Library’s fiscal operations are com¬ 
plicated, diverse, and difficult to control 
at best. It not only accounts for ap- 


CONGRESS, 1939-44 

propriations which amounted in 1939 to 
$3,107,707 and which have now reached 
$4,326,930. It disposed as well of 
$350,000, this last year, from nongovern¬ 
mental sources, $75,000 of which came 
from its own investments. It operates 
two businesses which gross better than 
$300,000 each per annum—the Copy¬ 
right Office and the sale of catalog cards. 
And it administers two revolving funds 
in its photoduplication service and its 
recording laboratory which supports an¬ 
nual sales of about $75,000 and $18,000, 
respectively. Some indication of the com¬ 
plexity of the Library’s fiscal operations 
and procedures is provided by the fact 
that a staff of five highly competent in¬ 
vestigators from the general accounting 
office, who began a survey of these opera¬ 
tions at my request in the fall of 1939, 
were unable to file their final report until 
April 1942. Some indication of the char¬ 
acter of those operations at the time is 
given by a preliminary report of a rep¬ 
resentative of the division of adminis¬ 
trative management of the Bureau of the 
Budget, who stated in a “Memorandum 
on Liscal Administration in the Library 
of Congress” that “in view of the present 
inadequacy of the fiscal facilities of the 
Library and a lack of co-ordination of its 
several fiscal activities, a complete re¬ 
organization appears to be necessary.” 

What was true of fiscal operations was 
true of other operations of the Library. 
With the exception of the administra¬ 
tion of buildings and grounds, which was 
centered in a superintendent, most of the 
Library’s administrative operations were 
performed not in one office but in two or 
three. Even the vital administration of 
personnel matters was thus divided. 
Certain personnel functions were per¬ 
formed in a section of the chief clerk’s 
office. Others were performed in the 
office of the superintendent of buildings 
and grounds. The consequence was that 
the Library lacked the administrative 


£ 


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4 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


supervision and staff to develop a con¬ 
sidered personnel policy. It had no 
grievance procedure, no announced poli¬ 
cies covering promotions and the posting 
of vacancies, no announced policy with 
reference to Library unions or staff re¬ 
lations, and no such systematic re-ex¬ 
amination of Library classifications as is 
necessary to the maintenance of salary 
levels under the classification system. 

It was in large part, therefore, the 
effort of a single Librarian and chief as¬ 
sistant librarian to deal with masses of 
forms, vouchers, pay rolls, and the like 
which led to a study of the possibilities 
of reorganization. But there were other 
and more substantial reasons as well. 
After my appointment was confirmed 
by the Senate but before I took office, I 
was earnestly approached by a number of 
librarians of university and other libraries 
who begged me to “do something” about 
the delay in the delivery of Library of 
Congress cards to purchasers. I was 
therefore aware, before I came to Wash¬ 
ington, that something was wrong at some 
point in our cataloging and card-selling 
operations; and I appointed, shortly after 
I took office, a co-ordinating committee on 
processing to look into the whole operation 
and report to me. The committee was 
made up of the chief cataloger, the chiefs 
of the accessions, card, and classification 
divisions, the director of the union catalog, 
the chief of the co-operative cataloging 
service, and the chief assistant librarian. 
All the various complaints, criticisms, and 
charges which had reached me from li¬ 
brarians and others in various parts of the 
country were sent along to the committee 
for consideration — complaints that the 
output per cataloger was down by one- 
half since the beginning of the century, 
charges that filing into the public catalog 
was months in arrears, criticisms that the 
catalogers were untrained, etc. The com¬ 
mittee wisely called in the doctors and 
the specialists. It heard Miss Mann, 


Professor Harriet MacPherson, Mr. Met" 
calf, Mr. Gjelsness, Mr. Trotier, and Mr- 
Wright. And, when it reported on De¬ 
cember 9, 1939, it announced findings 
which suggested that something had to 
be done and done promptly. There was, 
said the committee, an unprocessed ar¬ 
rearage in the Library of 1,670,161 vol¬ 
umes — that is to say, better than a mil¬ 
lion and a half of the six million volumes 
and pamphlets (exclusive of maps, music, 
manuscripts, prints, etc.) estimated to 
be held by the Library of Congress at 
that time were not represented in the 
public catalog. And, what was worse, the 
arrearage was piling up at the rate of 
thirty thousand books and pamphlets a 
year. 

A similar, though less spectacular, re¬ 
port was made to me at about the same 
time on the subject of acquisitions. I had 
been struck, as anyone, I think, would' 
have been, by the piles of book order 
cards which provided the perennial back¬ 
stop on Martin Roberts’ desk. I had been 
impressed also by the complaints of that 
devoted and insatiable book purchaser, 
the late law librarian, John Vance. Mr. 
Vance had told me, with courtesy but 
firmness, that he was continually losing 
books he wanted to buy because the pur¬ 
chase forms backed up in the chief as¬ 
sistant librarian’s office. When I ques¬ 
tioned the chief assistant librarian, he ad¬ 
mitted the charge but contended that it 
was necessary for him to examine every 
title proposed for purchase, whether he 
knew anything about the book or not: 
somebody had to do it. 

Since Martin Roberts worked twelve to 
fourteen hours a day in any case and since 
he would have had to work eighteen or 
twenty to pass on all book orders, it seemed 
to me clear that something was wrong with 
the administration of the purchasing sys¬ 
tem and perhaps with the system itself. I 
therefore asked all chiefs of divisions and 
consultants (issuing my first general order 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


5 


for the purpose) to tell me what steps they 
habitually took to inform themselves of the 
books the Library should have and of the 
books it could secure. Their replies made 
it obvious that the Library had no con¬ 
sidered acquisitions program but depended 
rather on the activity of sellers in offering 
materials than on its own activity as a 
buyer in deciding what materials it needed 
and seeking them out. I therefore ap¬ 
pointed a committee of those members of 
the Library’s staff principally concerned 
with purchases and asked them to consider 
what the existing situation was, what ac¬ 
quisitions policy the Library should adopt, 
and how such a policy should be adminis¬ 
tered. This committee, called the “com¬ 
mittee on acquisitions policy,” listened to 
specialists and experts from outside the 
Library, such as Dr. Leland, Dr. Raney, 
Dr. Zook, Dr. Adams, Dr. Swingle, Dr. 
Blachly, Mr. Metcalf, and others, and 
duly made its report. Of its recommenda¬ 
tions on acquisitions policy I shall speak 
below. What is immediately relevant here 
is the indication given by its report that 
reorganization might be necessary in the 
acquisitions procedures as well as in the 
processing procedures and the administra¬ 
tive practices. The committee informed 
me that, of forty important subjects listed 
for study, 

twelve receive relatively adequate attention from 
heads and other members of divisions, consultants, 
librarians, and other agents; thirteen of the forty 
subjects are partially and inadequately provided 
for; and in fifteen, or over one-third of the forty 
subjects, no general provision is made for the initi¬ 
ation of orders. Thus it appears that general 
philosophy, American and United States history, 
the social sciences and law generally, music, fine 
arts, oriental languages and literature, medical dis¬ 
ciplines come in the first group; religions, classical 
archaeology, geology, classical and modern Euro¬ 
pean languages and literature, the mathematical 
and physical sciences and agriculture fall in the sec¬ 
ond group; while general history, special national 
histories, modern fields of anthropology, the whole 
subject of education, the earth and biological 
sciences, medical arts and specialties (provided 


for, indeed, in the Army Medical Library) and 
technology come under the group for which there 
is no regular and adequate provision as to 
recommendations. 

A closely related—an inevitably re¬ 
lated—situation was found to exist in the 
reference work of the Library—in both 
the reference work for Congress and the 
reference work for the Government as a 
whole and for the general public. The 
legislative reference service was inade¬ 
quately staffed to perform the duties the 
Library owed Congress, and the general 
reference staff was inadequate to the de¬ 
mands made upon it. A certain number 
of special divisions with subject special¬ 
ists, some of them of the first competence, 
had been created; but they had been 
created rather as opportunity offered 
than as the service demanded. General 
reference inquiries in fields in which spe¬ 
cial divisions had not been established 
were referred to the reading rooms staff; 
and the reading room staff, though an 
able staff and certainly one of the most 
obliging in the world, was not a faculty 
of scholars nor could it offer first-rate 
scholarly guidance in all the fields not 
covered elsewhere. 

Moreover, the combination of refer¬ 
ence functions, book-service functions, 
and custodial functions in the same man 
or group of men was neither efficient nor, 
however it may have looked on the sur¬ 
face, economical. Every assistant wanted 
to be a reference man or, in any case, a 
desk man in the public service; and the 
custodial responsibilities languished. 
There had been a count of materials “by 
estimate only” in 1898 and a “new count 
of printed books and manuscripts” in 
1902. Thereafter there had been a single 
inventory of the classified collections 
which began in 1928 (June) and ended in 
1934 (May), showing 170,692 volumes 
missing from their places. (Of these, ma¬ 
terials represented by 91,359 entries had 
been found by 1941; and by spring, 1944, 


6 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


materials represented by an additional 
24,990 entries had been located, reducing 
the entries for missing books to 54,343.) 
No officer of the Library in a position to 
make his voice heard was charged with 
primary custodial responsibilities; the 
various special divisions had their own, 
often conflicting, procedures for book 
care and binding; and a tremendous ar¬ 
rearage of some 373,721 volumes re¬ 
quiring binding and unfit to be used until 
they could be bound had accumulated. 

It was the attempt to deal with these 
various factual situations rather than an 
a priori decision to reorganize the Li¬ 
brary of Congress which led to the 
changes of 1939-44. And the changes, in 
consequence, were not blueprint changes 
conceived in advance but administrative 
adaptations. The first step was obviously 
to secure the funds necessary for an at¬ 
tack upon the most urgent problems. The 
subcommittee on the legislative bill of 
the House committee on appropriations 
has generously agreed to let me file sup¬ 
plemental estimates three months after 
the date when estimates are properly 
due, and I was thus given a brief period 
to study the Library’s situation and to 
submit a statement of its most pressing 
needs as I then saw them. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the 
document in which this statement was 
presented was something less than a com¬ 
plete account of the requirements of the 
Library of Congress. It did, however, at¬ 
tack the principal problems as they then 
appeared- — the failure of the processing 
operations to keep up with acquisitions, 
the lack of subject specialists in numer¬ 
ous fields of legislative and general refer¬ 
ence, the inadequacy of funds for book 
purchase, the shockingly low Library 
salaries, the lack of administrative offi¬ 
cers and administrative controls, etc. 
Special emphasis [was [put on the alarm¬ 
ing situation in the processing operations 
where eighty-two additional positions were 


requested; on the need for first-class refer¬ 
ence assistants in the legislative reference 
service, where ten additional positions of 
this character plus some twenty other posi¬ 
tions were estimated as necessary; on the 
lack of subject specialists to cover the 
“orphan” fields of acquisitions and refer¬ 
ence work, where the Library had no 
present coverage and where eleven places 
were wanted; on the appropriation for 
book purchase, where an additional $275,- 
000 was requested; and on Library salaries, 
where $108,720 was requested for within- 
grade promotions while awaiting reclassi¬ 
fication. Altogether, an increase of the 
appropriation from $3,107,707 to $4,189,- 
228 was asked. 

The subcommittee considered these 
estimates with the care and understanding 
it has demonstrated throughout the five 
years in which I have been privileged to 
deal with it. And these words, I may add, 
are not put here as a formality or a mere 
politeness. They come from the heart. 
The subcommittee as I have known it 
under the Honorable Emmet O’Neal of 
Kentucky and the Honorable Louis 
Rabaut of Michigan has demonstrated 
again and again its devotion to the Library 
of Congress and the things for which the 
Library stands. It has not always given 
us the things we wanted most, and it has 
never given us everything we wanted; but 
its decisions have been just, and its care 
for the present and for the future of the 
great Library for which its appropriations 
provide has been as evident as its judg¬ 
ment and good sense. 

The results of my first appearance before 
the committee were as mixed as they have 
been since. After a careful two-day hear¬ 
ing the committee recommended, and the 
Congress allowed, a total increase of 
$367,591 in the appropriation for the 
Library. Fifty new positions in the proc¬ 
essing divisions, together with the position 
of co-ordinator of these divisions, were 
allowed. A $30,000 addition was made 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


7 


to the book purchase fund, and various 
other increases were voted; but the refer¬ 
ence specialists in the general and the 
legislative reference services were not al¬ 
lowed, nor the position of assistant librar¬ 
ian in charge of acquisitions and the 
-scholarly services. For increases in Li¬ 
brary salaries we were instructed to 
request reclassification by the Civil Service 
Commission. 

The most important gain was, of course, 
the fifty new positions in the processing 
divisions and the new position of co¬ 
ordinator. It was essential that the best 
use be made of these positions; and though 
I was, and am, grateful for the work of the 
Library’s co-ordinating committee on 
processing, I felt it desirable to have a 
completely objective and disinterested 
study made by highly competent members 
of the profession not connected with the 
Library’s staff. Funds were made avail¬ 
able by the late Frederick Keppel, presi¬ 
dent of the Carnegie Corporation of New 
York, whose warm and imaginative sup¬ 
port of the Library during his lifetime was 
a continuing source of strength and confi¬ 
dence to me, as to so many others who 
remember him with gratitude and affec¬ 
tion. And on April 10, 1940, a committee, 
which came to be known as the “Librar¬ 
ian’s Committee,” was set up. Its chair¬ 
man was Prof, (now Dean) Carleton B. 
Joeckel, of the University of Chicago 
Graduate Library School; and the mem¬ 
bers, in addition to the chairman, were 
Mr. Paul North Rice, of the New York 
Public Library, and Dr. Andrew D. Os¬ 
born, of the Harvard College Library. 

The report of this committee is un¬ 
doubtedly one of the most important 
documents in the history of the Library 
of Congress. Submitted, because of its 
character, as a confidential paper, it has 
been regarded as confidential ever since. 

The committee’s principal recommen¬ 
dations were naturally devoted to the re¬ 
organization of the Library’s processing 


operations, but it did not confine itself 
to that field. It also proposed, following 
the earlier Statement of the Librarian of 
Congress in Support of the Supplemental 
Estimates , that book selection and refer¬ 
ence services 'be combined under an 
assistant librarian; and it indorsed the 
proposal of the Library’s committee on 
acquisitions policy that a systematic book 
budget be set up with quotas and allot¬ 
ments to the various subject areas— 
though it did not take up the difficult 
policy question of which subject areas 
and what quotas. On this point the com¬ 
mittee contented itself with the suggestion 
—often made outside Washington but rarely 
in it 1 —that the co-ordination of the activ¬ 
ities of the two hundred and fifty Federal 
libraries might produce substantial savings. 

As regards processing, the committee’s 
proposal was that an “acquisition and 
preparation” department be set up un¬ 
der an assistant librarian to combine ac¬ 
cessioning, cataloging, classification, card 
sales, and the union catalog. 

The accessions division was planned as 
the purchasing and receiving agency for 
all books, pamphlets, serials, and other 
materials acquired by the Library, ex¬ 
cept copyright material and current 
newspapers. Its suggested units were: 
order section, gift section, serial record 
section, and a duplicate and exchange 
section. 

The catalog and classification division, 
in the proposed plan, was to be a merger 

1 Two notable exceptions are the Army Medical 
Library and the library of the Department of 
Agriculture, with both of which the Library of 
Congress has worked out co-operative and collab¬ 
orative procedures of great and increasing value. 
Colonel Jones and Mr. Shaw, having great li¬ 
braries of their own, realize that the last thing a 
library of the size of the Library of Congress wants 
to do is to “take over” anything—it has troubles 
enough as it is. They are therefore free of the 
fear of being engulfed which effectively keeps 
many of the other Federal libraries from even 
entertaining the notion of collaboration with the 
Library of Congress. 



8 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


of the separate catalog and classification 
divisions. The new division would take 
over the functions of descriptive cata¬ 
loging, assignment of subject headings, 
classification, labeling, and mechanical 
preparation of material for the shelves. 
On the basis of function the following 
sections were recommended: descriptive 
cataloging, subject heading and classifi¬ 
cation, and processing. The latter section 
was to include the clerical and subpro¬ 
fessional activities of the new division— 
temporary cataloging, shelflisting, card 
preparation, etc. In certain instances the 
functional principle was to be carried 
over into the organization of subsections, 
including a searching subsection in the 
processing section and a co-operative 
cataloging subsection in the descriptive 
cataloging section. 

The card division was to be continued, 
with the general function of supplying 
printed cards to other libraries, its work 
to be confined to its primary function as 
a sales and distributing agency. It was 
not to attempt to serve as a supplemen¬ 
tary cataloging division or as a book- 
selection agency. The proposed reorgan¬ 
ization of the card division called for 
five sections: administration, accounting, 
searching, card drawing, and stock. 

Finally, because the technical opera¬ 
tions of the union catalog resembled 
those of the catalog and classification 
division, it was recommended that the 
union catalog be incorporated in the 
acquisitions and preparation department. 

These specific recommendations were 
combined with a number of comments on 
existing operations which should be briefly 
mentioned. The committee was impressed 
by the difficulties of administration in the 
processing divisions. The great com¬ 
plexity of the Library machine had pre¬ 
vented effective control of technical 
operations and had permitted great varia¬ 
tions in the quantity, quality, and uni¬ 
formity of work done in the various 


divisions and sections. It had been im¬ 
possible to maintain qualitative stand¬ 
ards of performance because of the enor¬ 
mous increase in accessions. The quality 
of administration had also decline to 
such a degree that administrators had 
been unable or unwilling to find solu¬ 
tions for the resulting difficulties. More 
responsible administration, more careful 
planning of the work program, and more 
systematic methods of informing and in¬ 
structing the staff regarding their duties 
and assignments were needed. The com¬ 
mittee recommended the preparation of 
a manual showing the general framework 
of Library organization, together with a 
series of divisional and sectional manuals 
showing the detailed procedures followed 
in the various sections. 

The committee’s report also empha¬ 
sized the deficiencies in statistics of cur¬ 
rent additions to the Library as well as of 
total holdings and the failure of the ad¬ 
ministrators to establish individual rec¬ 
ords of work performance in the process¬ 
ing divisions. It was recommended that 
statistics be revised and standardized 
and that individual work records be 
used as tools of administration wherever 
possible. 

In the absence of statistical data the 
committee guessed that the costs of the 
technical processes in the Library were 
extremely high and probably out of line 
with comparable costs in other large li¬ 
braries. A new tradition of efficiency and 
speed in processing activities was rec¬ 
ommended as a prime requisite if the 
Library was to achieve more efficient 
operations at reduced costs. 

It was suggested that the card division 
review its sales program in terms of the 
present distribution of card sales and 
possible extensions of the present system 
to a larger number of subscribers. The 
division of accessions, the committee 
felt, should also review its practices in 
purchasing books and periodicals in 


9 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


order to determine whether more favor¬ 
able discount rates might be secured. A 
strong effort should be made to reduce 
the high costs of printing and binding, 
and there must be recognition of the 
need for modifications in the form and 
fulness of cataloging. Finally, a highly 
competent professional personnel must 
be developed. The recruiting policy for 
the professional positions should be 
radically changed, and clerical and pro¬ 
fessional duties should be more accurate¬ 
ly defined. 

It will be evident from this abstract 
of its comments and recommendations 
that the Librarian’s Committee did not 
undertake to present a blueprint for re¬ 
organization but rather a critique ac¬ 
companied by suggestions. Since the 
critique was extensive and the sugges¬ 
tions were numerous, I submitted the 
report to selected members of the staff 
for comment before attempting to make 
up my own mind as to the action to be 
taken. One step, however, was so clearly 
indicated—was, indeed, so urgently nec¬ 
essary—that I decided to take it at once 
and without waiting for the reactions of 
my colleagues to the report as a whole. 
Some kind of departmental organization 
was essential if the Library was to func¬ 
tion at all. The committee had repeated 
again and again its finding that adminis¬ 
trative controls were weak in the Library 
as a whole, as well as within the Library’s 
divisions; and the reason, as the com¬ 
mittee saw it and as the Bureau of the 
Budget had seen it before, was also the 
reason as I saw it: a lack of upper ad¬ 
ministrative staff. 

I therefore issued, at the end of June, 
1940, two general orders (Nos. 962 and 
964) setting up an Administrative De¬ 
partment and a Reference Department. 
Mr. L. Quincy Mumford, generously 
loaned to us by the New York Public 
Library for the purpose, was appointed 
co-ordinator of the processing divisions 
726178—47 - 2 


on July 2, 1940, to take office on Septefn.- 
ber 1 (General Order No. 970); and on 
September 18, 1940, after my colleagues 
had reported their reactions to the com¬ 
mittee’s report, the Processing Depart¬ 
ment was established by. General Order 
No. 981. Since no “department directors” 
existed in the Library, with the exception 
of the new co-ordinator of processing, it 
was necessary to find the administrators 
of the new units by assigning men from 
other jobs. 

The director of the Administrative De¬ 
partment was found by assigning to that 
position Mr. Verner W. Clapp, the ad¬ 
ministrative assistant to the Librarian, 
whose position, in turn, had been found 
by reviving the position of executive as¬ 
sistant, which had preceded the position 
of chief clerk. The director of the Refer¬ 
ence Department was found, after vari¬ 
ous essays, by assigning Dr. Luther H. 
Evans, who had become chief assistant 
librarian following the death of that de¬ 
voted and selfless public servant, Mr. 
Martin Roberts. The result was to de¬ 
prive the Librarian of the assistance of 
his general executive officer, giving him, 
instead, officers in charge of the Library’s 
three principal operations. It was not an 
ideal arrangement, but it was an improve¬ 
ment. And it worked more or less satisfac¬ 
torily for three years, until the chief assist¬ 
ant librarian was able to return to his post, 
leaving the administration of the Refer¬ 
ence Department to the former reference 
librarian and superintendent of the read¬ 
ing rooms, Mr. David C. Mearns. 

As far as the basic structural framework 
of the Library of Congress is concerned, 
its “reorganization” was the division into 
departments of the “Library proper” to 
complete the departmentalizadon begun 
by the statutory establishment of the Copy¬ 
right Office and the Law Library. Follow¬ 
ing the issuance of General Orders Nos. 
962, 964, 970, and 981, the Library of 
Congress consisted of five departments: 


10 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


Administrative, Reference, Processing, 
Law Library, and Copyright Office. One 
change has been made in this structure 
since. At the end of the fiscal year 1943 
the Administrative Department was liqui¬ 
dated, its units being transferred to the 
office of the chief assistant librarian, and 
an Acquisitions Department was created 
out of the units of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment and Processing Department engaged 
in acquisitions work (General Order No. 
1188, June 30, 1943). 

But, though the basic change was sim¬ 
ple, the related changes were sometimes 
complicated and can only be understood 
by an examination in some detail of the 
evolution of the three new departments 
within themselves. Since the most ex¬ 
tensive changes were made in the proc¬ 
essing operations, it will be convenient to 
begin there. 

THE PROCESSING DEPARTMENT 

As originally established by General 
Order No. 981 of September 18, 1940, 
the Processing Department consisted of 
five divisions, rather than the four rec¬ 
ommended by the Librarian’s Commit¬ 
tee, but did not include the union catalog 
as the committee had hoped it would. 
Included were the accessions, card, cata¬ 
log preparation and maintenance, de¬ 
scriptive cataloging, and subject cata¬ 
loging divisions. The chief difference be¬ 
tween the committee’s recommendation 
and the general order was that divisional 
status was given by the general order to 
three units which the committee had 
proposed to treat as sections—descriptive 
cataloging, subject heading and classifica¬ 
tion, and “processing” (i. e., temporary cat¬ 
aloging, shelflisting, card preparation, etc.). 

General Order No. 981, however, was 
a preliminary order only. It was followed 
on December 23, 1940, by General Order 
No. 1004, which established departmental 
organization in greater detail. The prin¬ 
cipal provisions were these: 


The accessions division continued as 
the purchasing and receiving agency for 
books, pamphlets, and other materials 
acquired by the Library. It received 
gifts, transfers, and deposits, arranged 
exchanges, approved invoices and vouchers 
for payments, and kept financial records of 
book expenditures and incumbrances. 

.The card division continued to supply 
printed cards to other libraries. Its prin¬ 
cipal function became that of a sales and 
distributing agency. 

The subject cataloging division was to 
perform all functions involving the sub¬ 
ject analysis of books—namely, classifi¬ 
cation, assignment of subject headings, 
and the shelflisting of materials added 
to the classified collections. It was to 

classify books and pamphlets according to the 
Library’s own classification, and assign subject 
headings to them; assign author or other book 
numbers to them and record them in the shelf- 
list; classify them according to the Decimal 
Classification; and, for the time being, maintain 
an alphabetical record of serial publications. 

The division included the following sec¬ 
tions: subject cataloging, shelflisting and 
serial records, and decimal classification. 

The descriptive cataloging division was 
responsible for the establishment of au¬ 
thor and title entries and the descriptive 
cataloging of all materials cataloged in 
the Processing Department. Its work 
was described as including the prepara¬ 
tion of copy for all entries, except subject 
entries, established in the Processing 
Department (music, manuscripts, maps, 
and Orientalia were cataloged in the 
special divisions); the editing of copy 
supplied by other libraries which cooper¬ 
ate in cataloging; and correspondence with 
libraries and individuals inquiring as to 
principles and practices of cataloging. 

The division consisted of the following 
sections: general catalog, copyright, short 
form, documents, periodicals, society pub¬ 
lications, law, editions and reprint, co¬ 
operative cataloging, and proof. 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


11 


The catalog preparation and main¬ 
tenance division was to centralize the 
clerical and subprofessional work of the 
cataloging processes and to relieve the 
professional workers of those duties. It 
included certain subprofessional duties 
formerly carried on in the accessions and 
card divisions. The following work was 
assigned to the division: sorting gift ma¬ 
terial; searching orders, gifts, and ex¬ 
changes; temporary cataloging; card 
preparation; filing and maintaining the 
library catalogs, including the process 
file; correcting and adding to catalog 
cards; labeling, perforating, and book¬ 
plating; mimeographing of catalog cards; 
and general messenger work. 

The division included these sections: 
searching, temporary cataloging, card 
preparation, filing, duplicates and addi¬ 
tions, and labeling. 

In sum, the new department as origi¬ 
nally set up brought together under cen¬ 
tral administrative control all operations 
necessary to prepare newly acquired ma¬ 
terials for the shelves with these excep¬ 
tions: the accessioning of periodicals and 
newspapers (handled in the periodicals 
division of the Reference Department); 
the accessioning of Government docu¬ 
ments acquired by exchange (handled in 
the documents division of the Reference 
Department); the accessioning of certain 
other- materials received directly in the 
Reference Department; the cataloging 
of newspapers, maps, prints, music, manu¬ 
scripts, and materials in oriental languages 
(cataloged, if at all, in the special reference 
divisions); and the preparation of materials 
for binding (handled in the Reference 
Department). 

General Order No. 1004 was the con¬ 
stitution and charter of the Processing 
Department down to October 27, 1942, 
when it was superseded by a new general 
order (No. 1163) designed to tighten the 
organization and to make certain changes 
dictated by the experience of the depart¬ 


ment’s first two years. In the interim three 
operations had been added to those cov¬ 
ered by General Order No. 981. A proc¬ 
ess file had been established in the catalog 
preparation and maintenance division in 
October 1940, to assist in locating books in 
process and to enable the searchers of 
recommended orders to satisfy themselves 
that the book recommended had not 
recently been received by gift, exchange, 
or otherwise. A central serial record had 
been set up in the accessions division in 
August 1941. And a duplicate and ex¬ 
change section had been created in the 
accessions division on November 15, 1941, 
which became the general exchange sec¬ 
tion on May 11, 1942, when the division 
took over responsibility for the accession¬ 
ing of Government publications coming in 
by exchange, deposit, or gift. In addition, 
Mr. Mumford’s leave of absence had ex¬ 
pired and Mr. Herman H. Henkle, 
director of the School of Library Science at 
Simmons College in Boston, had become 
the first permanent director of the depart¬ 
ment, his appointment dating from Jan¬ 
uary 26, 1942. 

General Order No. 1163 made several 
important changes in the sectional organ¬ 
ization of the department’s divisions, 
designed (1) to draw related functions 
more closely together in the sectional 
organization; (2) to reduce the number of 
sections to more manageable proportions; 
(3) to increase the field of activity of 
certain sections to make possible greater 
flexibility of work assignment within the 
sections; (4) to concentrate responsibility 
for technical supervision in the descriptive 
and subject cataloging divisions by desig¬ 
nation in each division of the position of 
principal cataloger; and (5) to expand the 
Processing Department office to provide 
for the maintenance of personnel records, 
work records, and cost-analysis records on 
a departmental basis. 

In the accessions division the Hispanic, 
law, and general order sections were 


12 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


united as units of the newly constituted 
order section; and the general exchange, 
documents exchange, and gift sections 
were united as units of the exchange and 
gift section. 

The serial record was expanded to ab¬ 
sorb some of the serial recording functions 
of the shelflisting and serial records 
section in the subject cataloging division, 
becoming the serial record section of the 
accessions division. 

In the catalog preparation and main¬ 
tenance division the purchase searching, 
gift searching, preliminary cataloging, 
and process information units were united 
to form the book section. The card 
preparation and filing sections were united 
with the proofreading section from the 
descriptive cataloging division to form the 
card section. The labeling unit was trans¬ 
ferred from the division, plating and per¬ 
forating of new accessions being placed in 
the purchase accessioning unit of the ac¬ 
cessions division. Plating and perforating 
of newly bound serials and labeling of all 
classified books were transferred to the 
shelflisting section of the subject cataloging 
division. 

The assistant chief of the descriptive 
cataloging division became the principal 
cataloger and deputy chief of the divi¬ 
sion, and the assistant chief of the subject 
cataloging division became the principal 
cataloger and deputy chief of that divi¬ 
sion—a change designed to concentrate 
responsibility for technical supervision of 
the work in each division. General review 
of card copy for style was assigned to a 
new officer, the editor of card copy, with 
"he transfer of the proofreading section to 
tne catalog preparation and maintenance 
division. The copyright and general sec¬ 
tions were abolished and the work redis¬ 
tributed to the newly established English 
language section and foreign language 
section. The law and documents sections 
were modified to become the American 
and British law and documents section and 


the foreign law and documents section, 
with the work of the former sections dis¬ 
tributed accordingly. 

In the subject cataloging division the 
serial record unit was abolished, its work 
being divided between the shelflisting 
section in the same division and the serial 
record section in the accessions division. 

In the card division the card drawing 
and the stock and supply sections were 
combined to form a card stock and draw¬ 
ing section. 

Finally, the staff of the Processing 
Department office, which had previously 
consisted of director, administrative as¬ 
sistant, and director’s secretary, was ex¬ 
panded and reorganized to provide for 
the maintenance of personnel, work rec¬ 
ords, and cost accounting on a depart¬ 
mental basis. 

A department secretary was added, 
and four clerical positions were transferred 
to the department office from the divisions. 

These changes completed the design 
of the Processing Department as we see 
that design. One major and two minor 
modifications have been made in the de¬ 
partment since, and there are still proc¬ 
essing operations in the Reference De¬ 
partment which we hope some day to put 
where they belong, but no further altera¬ 
tion in the basic structure is contemplated. 

The minor modifications were the trans¬ 
fer from the Reference Department to the 
Processing Department of the binding- 
office (binding in our practice is a process¬ 
ing operation or a custodial operation, 
depending on whose book is being bound) 
and of the union catalog, which is also a 
processing or a reference operation, de¬ 
pending on which end of the cat you pick 
up first. 

The major alteration was the establish¬ 
ment of the Acquisitions Department, 
referred to above. Experience convinced 
us that both the Statement of the Librarian of 
Congress in Support of the Supplemental Esti¬ 
mates and the Report of the Librarian's 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


13 


Committee were wrong in recommending 
that the book-selection part of book 
purchasing should be combined with 
reference work and separated from book 
accessioning. It was clear that the people 
who recommended books for purchase 
would necessarily be reference specialists 
and therefore members of the Reference 
Department. It was clear also that the 
business of purchase would always be a 
specialized business requiring specialized 
personnel. But we were convinced that 
the Library would never receive the books 
it should receive until all book-selecting 
operations were centralized in one adminis¬ 
trative unit under one administrative head. 
We therefore set up the Acquisitions De¬ 
partment on July 1, 1943, and transferred 
to it the units of both Processing and 
Reference primarily engaged in book 
selection and purchase. This meant that 
the accessions division transferred its 
loyalties from the Processing Department 
to the Acquisitions Department and that 
the catalog preparation and maintenance 
division of the Processing Department 
having lost its searching unit to the Ac¬ 
quisitions Department, was abolished, its 
preliminary cataloging section going to 
the descriptive cataloging division, its 
proof, card preparation, and filing units 
to the card division, and its process in¬ 
formation unit to the Processing Depart¬ 
ment office. 

It may be helpful, by way of recapitula¬ 
tion, to let Mr. Henkle describe the present 
organization of his department in his own 
words: 

The descriptive cataloging division is responsible 
for preparing preliminary catalog entries for all 
titles directed to the Processing Department and 
for preparing copy for the printer of the book 
descriptions which constitute the content of the 
Library of Congress printed cards, exclusive of the 
designation of subject headings and classification 
numbers. “Descriptive cataloging,” in the range 
of the division’s responsibilities, involves the 
establishing of authors’ names to be used officially 
in the Library’s catalogs; the recording of the 


titles and other bibliographical characteristics 
as well as physical descriptions of the books 
cataloged; the editing of the catalog copy for the 
printer; and the continuing correction and 
change of existing catalog entries as called for in 
connection with the cataloging of new acquisi¬ 
tions. The division also carries primary responsi¬ 
bility for the program of cooperative cataloging. 

The division consists of seven sections: pre¬ 
liminary cataloging, English language, foreign 
language, American and British law and docu¬ 
ments, foreign law and documents, serials, and 
co-operative cataloging. 

The preliminary cataloging section is the 
point at which new acquisitions normally enter 
the Processing Department from the Acquisi¬ 
tions Department. The section is a key control 
point in the processing operations, being re¬ 
sponsible for preparing the initial master-card 
which, as it proceeds through the cataloging 
divisions, becomes the printer’s copy for Library 
of Congress printed cards, and also carrying re¬ 
sponsibility for distributing items to be cataloged 
to the several sections of the division. 

The division is administered by a chief, who 
has an administrative assistant and a secretary; 
a principal cataloger, who also serves as deputy 
chief of the division; an editor of card copy; 
and the section heads. The division has a staff 
of ninety-one members. 

The subject cataloging division is the suc¬ 
cessor of the former classification division, and it 
inherited responsibility for subject headings from 
the former catalog division. This new division 
has, accordingly, full responsibility for the analysis 
and record of the subject content of the Library’s 
collections as it is recorded in the public catalog. 
Intimately involved in the functions of this divi¬ 
sion, too, is the very important responsibility for 
continued review of the published classification 
schedules and list of subject headings, in the light 
of growth and change in all fields of knowledge. 

Also within the “subject cataloging” functions 
of the division is the classification of books by the 
decimal classification system, as a service to other 
libraries. The division has responsibility, also, 
for shelflisting all classified titles and for perform¬ 
ing certain of the terminal steps in preparation, 
namely, labeling all classified volumes and plating 
and marking volumes which are bound after being 
received by the Library. 

The subject cataloging division consists of three 
sections: subject cataloging, decimal classifica¬ 
tion, and shelflisting. The division is adminis¬ 
tered by a chief, with a secretary; a principal 
cataloger, who also serves as deputy chiei 
of the division and directs the work of the 


14 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


subject cataloging section; an editor of subject 
headings; an editor of classification; and the 
heads of the decimal classification and shelflisting 
sections. The staff of the division numbers 
fifty-six members. 

The card division is primarily responsible 
for superintending arrangements for printing 
catalog cards, for maintaining the stock of 
cards, and for distribution of Library of Con¬ 
gress printed cards through sales to other li¬ 
braries. Additional functions assigned to the 
division are proofreading the galley proof for 
printed cards, preparing the cards, when print¬ 
ed, for use in the Library’s catalogs, and filing 
printed cards in the public and official cata¬ 
logs and preliminary cards in the process file. 

The division consists of nine sections: catalog 
investigation; searching; revising; documents; 
series order; subject order; card stock and draw¬ 
ing; proofreading, card preparation, and filing; 
and the secretary’s office, which includes the 
accounting unit. The division is administered 
by a chief, with a special assistant and the staff 
of the secretary’s office, an assistant chief, and the 
heads of the sections. The staff of the division 
numbers one hundred and fifty-seven, with occa¬ 
sional additional assistants employed on an 
hourly basis. 

The union catalog division exists primarily 
to serve American libraries and research insti¬ 
tutions by developing the union catalog of the 
holdings of the co-operating libraries and by 
serving as a central clearing house for locating 
books anywhere in the United States. The union 
catalog is the principal source of information for 
interlibrary loans. 

No change has been made in the organization 
of the division; but under appropriations made 
available by Congress the staff has been greatly 
expanded for the purpose of carrying forward 
one-, two-, and five-year projects of the expansion 
of the catalog. The normal staff of fourteen 
members was increased for the year 1943-44 to 
thirty-nine. The division is administered by a 
chief, with a secretary, and an assistant chief. 

The binding office serves as the clearing house 
for all materials bound after receipt for addition 
to the collections. It maintains and clears 
records of all material routed to the bindery by 
custodial divisions, itself preparing most of the 
unbound monographs. It has final responsi¬ 
bility for reviewing all materials prepared for 
binding and particularly for making arrange¬ 
ment of materials accord with the catalog records. 

The office has a staff of seven members and is 
administered by the binding officer and an 
assistant binding officer. 


The department office of the processing 
department serves as the co-ordinating unit of 
the department for personnel, budgetary, pro¬ 
duction, and cost-accounting records (except 
that cost accounting for card distribution is 
performed in the secretary’s office of the card 
division) and supplies information about books 
in process. The office is under the immediate 
supervision of an administrative assistant to 
the director, with a staff of seven assistants. 

The procedures involved in the preparation 
of books for the collections, from the prepa¬ 
ration of preliminary cards through the filing of 
printed cards in the catalogs and the labeling 
of books for the shelves, are procedures which 
require close co-ordination. The primary pur¬ 
pose of the department organization is to pro¬ 
vide this co-ordination, together with the direc¬ 
tion necessary to efficient operation, the re¬ 
sponsibility for which rests with the director. 
He is assisted by an assistant director, a tech¬ 
nical assistant, and a secretary. The technical 
assistant conducts and directs research on the 
technical problems of the department. To aid 
him and to assist the director and the Librarian 
in estimating the department’s work and its 
needs, statistical data are being accumulated 
as rapidly as possible. Cost-accounting pro¬ 
cedures, established with the aid of the general 
accounting office, have been in operation for 
card distribution for about two years. As a result 
of these accounting records, the Library is enabled 
to conduct its card sales on a more business-like 
basis and to determine card prices which are 
equitable both to subscribing libraries and to the 
Government of the United States. Until recently, 
however, the Library has not had precise knowl¬ 
edge of the cost of its other processing operations. 
Again with the aid of the general accounting 
office, a continuing system of work records and 
cost accounting has been set up for the descriptive 
and subject cataloging divisions and will be ex¬ 
tended shortly throughout all operations of the de¬ 
partment. It is anticipated that a report of the 
system will be made available when possible 
to other libraries. 

THE ACQUISITIONS DEPARTMENT 

Although the creation of a separate 
Acquisitions Department came late in 
the process of reorganization, considera¬ 
tion of the problem came early. It came, 
in fact, at the beginning. My first general 
order, as I have noted above, was issued 
to learn what the Library’s book-selec- 


15 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


tion practices were; and the committee 
on acquisitions policy, which was to re¬ 
port on the entire problem, was ap¬ 
pointed a month after I took office. 
There has never been a time in the past 
five years when the question of acquisitions 
was not under consideration in its policy 
or its administrative aspects. It is still 
under study today; and, without doubt, 
it always will be. There is no final an¬ 
swer to the question of what books the 
Library of Congress should secure, nor is 
there any final answer to the question of 
how best to secure them. All we have 
done — all we have tried to do — has been 
to hammer out working answers which 
provide a basis for present operations. 
Our “ Canons of Selection” are certainly 
not eternal statements of objectives, but 
at least they are statements of objectives 
which will stand; which will shape and 
orient our acquisitions programs until 
better statements take their place. And 
our acquisitions procedures, though they 
are far from perfect, are at least stated 
procedures which take into account the 
various elements of the administrative 
problem as we know those elements. 

The Library of Congress, in other 
words, has not learned in the last five 
years how the collections of a national 
library can be made and kept as com¬ 
plete as they ought to be. It has not even 
learned how complete the collections of 
a national library, in a nation of other 
great libraries, ought to be. But it has 
faced both questions. It has tried to find 
answers. And — what is more impor¬ 
tant — it has tried to find those answers 
for itself. The Library of Congress no 
longer waits for dealers to offer books, 
or for collectors to give them, or for 
publishers to deposit them for copyright. 
The Library of Congress now takes ac¬ 
tive and affirmative steps of its own, and 
on its own account, to find out what it 
lacks and to secure what it needs. Re¬ 
organization of our acquisitions activi¬ 


ties, whatever else it means or does not 
mean, means that. 

And it began on that issue. The ques¬ 
tions submitted to the committee on ac¬ 
quisitions policy 2 in November 1939, were 
these: (1) Whether the Library of Congress 
should attempt to formulate a policy of 
accessions based upon a knowledge of 
present deficiencies and a plan for their 
correction by purchase or whether it 
should depend upon offers of sale of collec¬ 
tions, offers from the book trade, from 
collectors, and from donors, etc.; (2) 
whether a policy of accessions should be 
based upon the assumption that the Li¬ 
brary of Congress should be as nearly 
complete as possible, or upon the assump¬ 
tion that it should specialize in fields where 
it is now strong, leaving other fields to 
other libraries, or upon the assumption 
that the Library should be “well rounded”; 
(3) whether the operation of a plan of 
acquisitions should be directed by the 
accessions division; whether the accessions 
division or the division of bibliography or 
some other officer or unit should formulate 
a want-list; and whether such a list should 
be made the basis of standing orders. 

The committee’s report, filed on De¬ 
cember 19, 1939, found, as 1 have noted 
above, that under the then existing prac¬ 
tice pf the Library of Congress no provi¬ 
sion was made for initiating orders in 
fifteen of forty important subject fields and 
that inadequate provision was made in 
thirteen others, leaving only twelve which 
received “relatively adequate attention.” 


2 The members of the committee were: Dr. 
Sioussat, chief of the division of manuscripts 
chairman; Dr. Bentley, consultant in philosophy; 
Mr. Childs, chief of the division of documents; 
Dr. Clark, consultant in economics; Dr. Hanke, 
director of the Hispanic foundation; Mr. Mearns, 
superintendent of the reading rooms; Mr. Vance 
law librarian; Dr. Zahm, chief of the division ol 
aeronautics; Miss Dennis, assistant chief of the 
division of accessions; and Miss Heilman, chief 
of the division of bibliography. 



16 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


To correct this situation the committee 
recommended: 

1. The creation of a centralized agency in 
the Library for the co-ordination of all requests 
and recommendations for purchase, through 
the establishment of an acquisitions office under 
a director who would be advised by staff members 
broadly informed of the needs of the Library’s 
collections; 

2. A flexible book budget whereby a minimum 
sum might be counted upon for purchases in each 
field of acquisitions; 

3. Stricter enforcement of the copyright act to 
insure deposits of copyrighted books; 

4. The designation of agents of the Library in 
foreign countries to insure the procurement of 
essential foreign books; 

5. An increase in the number of consultants 
and other advisers in special subject fields; 

6. Closer co-operation between the Library 
and the academic and learned world, e. g., through 
the establishment of joint committees repre¬ 
senting the learned societies and the staff of the 
Library and through the establishment of fellow¬ 
ships for scholars whose work might be directed 
in the interest of the Library; and 

7. The institution of surveys of those parts of 
the Library’s collections which had been neglected 
because no separate divisions or special consult¬ 
ants had been assigned to supervise their custody 
or growth. 

On the policy question of “complete¬ 
ness” of the collections the committee 
concluded that “completeness” was de¬ 
sirable in the following fields: (1) Law and 
government, including governmental 
publications, (2) the civilization o'f the 
Americas, and other fields which may be 
described as national interests; and (3) 
all that contributes to information about 
books, with respect to the Library’s cata¬ 
logs and to bibliography in the widest 
significance of that term. 

As regards the relation of the acquisi¬ 
tions policy of the Library of Congress 
to the acquisitions policies of other librar¬ 
ies—federal and nonfederal—the com¬ 
mittee reported: First, that the Library 
might well rely on the Army Medical 
Library and the library of the Department 
of Agriculture to cover their respective 
fields, aiding them in building up their 


collections rather than attempting to du¬ 
plicate those collections; second, that the 
Library could not safely rely on the collec¬ 
tions of other federal libraries to cover 
special fields; third, that the Library should 
not attempt to build up collections in 
special fields in which it was not strong 
and in which other libraries in the United 
States were known to be strong; fourth, 
that the Library should, however, main¬ 
tain strong collections of its own in a con¬ 
dition of strength regardless of holdings 
elsewhere; fifth, that gifts of distinguished 
special collections should not be refused 
regardless of holdings elsewhere; and, sixth, 
that the Library of Congress should recog¬ 
nize a special duty to secure foreign ma¬ 
terials not readily available to smaller 
libraries. 

In terms of appropriations for increase 
of the collections, this meant, in the com¬ 
mittee’s opinion, $500,000 a year for In¬ 
crease General instead of the then appro¬ 
priation of $118,000. The committee esti¬ 
mated that it would cost $200,000 a year 
to buy important foreign publications in 
the fields of the Library’s interest. The 
balance was thought necessary for the 
purchase of noncopyrighted American 
materials, extra copies, and older materials 
of all origins. 

Since the Library was falling behind at 
the estimated rate of 30,000 volumes a year 
in processing the materials secured under 
its $118,000 appropriation for increase, I 
did not feel justified in accepting the 
committee’s figures; nor did I think it 
would be possible, in view of the outbreak 
of war, to buy $200,000 worth of books a 
year in Europe. We did, however, request 
in our supplemental estimates for the 
fiscal year 1941 an added $100,000 for 
Orientalia, an added $75,000 for Hispanic 
material, and $100,000 for purchases and 
photocopying in Europe. Thirty thousand 
dollars of this estimate was granted, raising 
the appropriation for Increase General to 
$148,000. But our efforts to provide for 


17 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


the “orphan” subject fields were, as I have 
noted, unsuccessful. The subcommittee on 
the legislative bill was sympathetic but 
firm. 

Unlike the processing problem, the ac¬ 
quisitions problem had to be attacked 
without new positions beyond those made 
available in the accessions division for 
purchase routines. The attack to be made 
was, however, clear. The Librarian’s 
Committee reinforced the findings and 
conclusions of the committee on acquisi¬ 
tions policy on most points and emphasized 
the need for action. Its recommendations 
were: 

1. That the reference services of the Library 
be united in a Reference Department, with an 
assistant librarian in charge; and that this 
assistant librarian, in addition to having re¬ 
sponsibility for directing, supervising, and co¬ 
ordinating the work of the reference service 
divisions, be also the principal book-selection 
officer, with responsibility for controlling and 
co-ordinating the book-selection work of the 
Library. “Book selection,” said the committee, 
“is a joint process, participated in by chiefs of 
divisions and others; but final decisions are made 
by the Assistant Librarian, and all suggestions for 
purchase are referred to him.” 

2. That a systematic book budget, under the 
control of the assistant librarian in charge of the 
Reference Department, be set up, with quotas for 
the various divisions and careful consideration of 
the proper distribution of funds among the various 
fields of knowledge. 

3. That the accessions division serve not as a 
book-selection agency but as a purchasing and 
receiving agency for all materials acquired by the 
Library and as the agency to execute orders re¬ 
ceived from the book-selection officers; and that 
it assume responsibility for maintaining in a 
central serial record a consolidated account of all 
serials received by the Library, the recording of 
which was currently maintained, so far as it was 
maintained at all, in a number of divisions. 

4. That the assistant librarian in charge of 
reference, or his delegate, or delegates of the 
assistant librarians in charge of reference and 
processing, select material for the collections from 
current copyright receipts. 

5. That the Library initiate a vigorous policy 
of encouraging gifts; that the gift section of the 
accessions division be enlarged; but that the 
Library feel free to reject inappropriate gifts. 


6. That possibilities be explored for co-ordinat¬ 
ing the activities of the Library with those of 
other Federal libraries in the District of Columbia 
with a view to making substantial savings through 
the elimination of duplication of collections. A 
Federal library council for this and similar 
purposes was recommended. 

Partly for reasons of logic and partly 
for practical reasons, we began not with 
the specific recommendations of the Li¬ 
brarian’s Committee but with the under¬ 
lying question of policy. The practical 
reasons related to the reclassification of 
Library positions by the Civil Serv¬ 
ice Commission. Commissioner Arthur 
Flemming, to whose warm interest and 
humane intelligence the Library of Con¬ 
gress owes a debt I am proud to acknowl¬ 
edge, had suggested that a consideration 
of the Library’s objectives by the Library’s 
staff would be helpful not only to the com¬ 
mission’s investigators but to the Library 
itself. Meetings were, therefore, held with 
the Library’s principal officers in the sum¬ 
mer of 1940, and the Library’s functions 
and objectives were discussed. They were 
not, I should note, the most successful 
meetings I can recall. One or two of the 
more articulate of my elder colleagues 
approached the discussion in the spirit of 
the senior benches at a faculty meeting: 
Change was undesirable and any discus¬ 
sion which might lead to change was in 
doubtful taste. The Library of Congress 
was too big and too old — above all, too 
old — to ask itself what it was doing and 
why and for what purpose. 

Once faced, however, the seriousness 
and urgency of the central question de¬ 
manded an honest and serious answer, 
and drafts of objectives for the Library’s 
service and for the selection of its mate¬ 
rials were prepared and circulated and 
finally approved. These “Canons of Se¬ 
lection” define the Library’s objectives 
with reference to three categories of users: 
first, Members of the Congress; second, 
officers of the Federal Government and 
the staffs of the various Government de- 


726178-47- 


3 



18 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


partments and agencies, including the 
Supreme Court and its bar; and, third, 
the general public. Because it is impossi¬ 
ble for the Library of Congress to “col¬ 
lect everything,” selection of material 
must be made on the basis of the antic¬ 
ipated needs of these three classes of 
users in the order given. The “Canons of 
Selection” apply to the Library’s acquisi¬ 
tion of material by purchase, but not to 
its acquisition by gift or by deposit for 
copyright. Their text follows: 

i. The Library of Congress should possess in some 
useful form all bibliothecal materials necessary to the 
Congress and to the officers of government of the United 
States in the performance of their duties. 

To this Canon only one exception is made. A 
large number of special libraries have been es¬ 
tablished in the various departments, bureaus, 
and offices of Government as, for example, the 
Department of Agriculture, the Office of the 
Surgeon General of the Army, etc. Where the 
collections of these libraries adequately cover 
particular fields in which the Library of Con¬ 
gress is not strong, the Library of Congress will 
not purchase extensively in 'these fields but 
will limit itself to the principal reference works, 
using its best efforts to strengthen the collec¬ 
tions already established elsewhere. Where, 
however, the collections of the Library are al¬ 
ready exceptionally strong they will be main¬ 
tained regardless of holdings in other libraries. 
The Reference Department of the Library of 
Congress will make it its business to know the 
extent of the collections of these special libraries 
and will establish, with the librarians in charge, 
machinery for cooperation both in the mainte¬ 
nance of these collections and in their use. 

2. The Library of Congress should possess all books 
and other materials (whether in original or copy) 
which express and record the life and achievements of 
the people of the United States. 

To this Canon there is one obvious exception. 
Where official records of the Federal Govern¬ 
ment are deposited in the National Archives the 
Library will secure only such copies as are 
necessary for the convenience of its readers. 
It will, however, attempt to secure all printed 
documents, Federal, State, and municipal. 

Again the Library’s principal concern here 
is with national rather than local records, and 
though it recognizes that many so-called local 
records are, or may become, of national signifi¬ 
cance (as, for example, local histories of which it 


has a distinguished collection) the emphasis of 
its effort is upon records of national interest, and 
its primary concern as regards local manuscript 
records is to stimulate their collection in appro¬ 
priate localities. 

3. The Library of Congress should possess, in some 
useful form, the material parts of the records of other 
societies, past and present, and should accumulate, in 
original or in copy, full and representative collections 
of the written records of those societies and peoples 
whose experience is of most immediate concern to the 
people of the United States. 

Two exceptions to the third Canon should be 
noted. First, the Library of Congress as the 
central United States depository for the publica¬ 
tions of all foreign governments will attempt to 
secure all the official publications of all govern¬ 
ments of the world. Second, where, aside from 
such official documents, other American libraries, 
whose collections are made broadly available, 
have already accumulated, or are in process of ac¬ 
cumulating, outstanding collections in well- 
defined areas, in which areas the Library of 
Congress is not strong, the Library of Congress 
will satisfy itself with general reference materials 
and will not attempt to establish intensive 
collections. 

The “Canons of Selection” provided 
the outlines of a basic policy of book 
selection. Their application in practice, 
however, presented problems. Since new 
appropriations for this purpose had not 
been voted, we were obliged to do what 
we could with the means available. Con¬ 
sequently, provision was made in the es¬ 
tablishment of the new Reference De¬ 
partment in June, 1940, for the centrali¬ 
zation there of book-selection responsi¬ 
bilities; and, in particular, responsibility 
for the approval of books for purchase 
devolved upon the reference librarian 
who was then Mr. David C. Mearns. 

A first step was the preparation of 
a schedule of allotments, by subject 
fields, from the appropriation for the 
increase of the collections. Sums in vary¬ 
ing amounts were set aside for the devel¬ 
opment of each class of material, the 
sum allotted being determined by con¬ 
siderations of known deficiencies in the 
collections, expected acquisitions from 


19 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


sources other than purchase, the extent 
of literary production in the field, and 
the relative importance of the subject 
to the Library in accordance with the 
“Canons of Selection.” This schedule of 
allotments covered all subjects in which 
the Library was interested except law. 
The appropriations for the increase of 
the Law Library and for books for the 
Supreme Court were left, for the time 
being, to be expended by the law librar¬ 
ian and the marshal of the Supreme 
Court, under the direction of the Chief 
Justice. 

Allotments having been set up, it be¬ 
came necessary to find recommending 
officers for each field. This was done in 
part with the aid of a grant from the 
Carnegie Corporation for the establish¬ 
ment of fellowships in the Library of 
Congress and in part by the appointment 
of associate fellows from the Library 
staff and from other government depart¬ 
ments. The Carnegie grant, now un¬ 
fortunately discontinued by the corpora¬ 
tion, was, in my opinion, one of the most 
hopeful and helpful efforts thus far made 
to bridge the gulf between libraries and 
the scholars who use them. The purpose 
was to prepare a certain number of young 
scholars every year to make scholarship 
serviceable to libraries in order that li¬ 
braries might be as serviceable as they 
should be to scholarship. The corpora¬ 
tion, as Mr. Keppel stated in announcing 
the grant, acted from a conviction “that 
American cultural institutions can be 
greatly strengthened if scholars will ac¬ 
cept a responsibility for the holdings of 
the national library and if the national 
library will accept a responsibility for 
the instruction of scholars in the services 
it is prepared to render.” I cannot too 
strongly emphasize my conviction that 
the withdrawal of the Carnegie grant at 
a time when the Library’s fellowships 
had clearly demonstrated their useful¬ 
ness, not only to the Library of Congress 


but to national scholarship, was a tragic 
loss to both. 

The first five fellows of the Library of 
Congress and their fields were: Dr. Rich¬ 
ard H. Heindel, University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania (modern European history); Dr. 
Edward P. Hutchinson, Harvard Uni¬ 
versity (population); Dr. Jerrold Orne, 
University of Minnesota (romance lan¬ 
guages and library science); Dr. William 
E. Powers, Northwestern University (ge¬ 
ology); and Mr. Francis J. Whitfield, 
Harvard University (Slavic languages 
and literatures). During the academic 
year 1941-42 the fellows included: 
Dr. Byron A. Soule (chemistry), Mr. 
Manuel Sanchez (technology), Dr. Wal¬ 
do Chamberlin (naval history), and Dr. 
Benjamin A. Botkin (folklore); during 
the academic year 1942-43: Dr. E. Frank¬ 
lin Frazier (American Negro studies) and 
Dr. Sidney Kramer (war bibliography). 
The present holders of fellowships are: 
Dr. Edward Mead Earle (military 
science), Dr. Walter Livingston Wright, 
Jr. (Near Eastern studies), Katherine 
Anne Porter (regional American literature) 
and Dr. John Kozak (Czechoslovakian 
studies). The fellowship of Mr. John 
Peale Bishop (comparative literature) was 
interrupted by his ill health, which has 
since tragically terminated in his death. 

By the summer of 1942 these various 
changes in acquisitions policy and prac¬ 
tice had shaken down to such a point 
that a definite statement could issue. 
General Order No. 1151, of August 25, 
1942, strengthened the control exercised 
by the reference librarian over the selec¬ 
tion of materials, extending it to acquisi¬ 
tions by every means—gift, deposit, and 
exchange, as well as purchase. Expendi¬ 
tures from the appropriations for the law 
collections were alone excepted. The 
commission for the selection of copyright 
deposits was abolished, its duties being 
shared by the reference librarian and the 
director of the Processing Department. 


20 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


These officers were also to examine and 
select materials from receipts by gift, 
transfer, and exchange. The responsi¬ 
bility of the accessions division was also 
clarified: The division was to be the sole 
office of record for incoming materials. 

But, if the organization and procedures 
were clear, they were far from satisfactory. 
The reference librarian could not act as 
the principal book-selecting officer of the 
Library without injury to his work as 
reference librarian—and vice versa. More¬ 
over, the lack of administrative connection 
between book selection (in the Reference 
Department) and book buying (in the 
Processing Department) was a weakness 
which became daily more obvious. The 
result was the decision, debated through 
the winter of 1942-43 and finally taken 
in the summer of 1943 (June 30), to re¬ 
move final responsibility for book selection 
from the Reference Department and to 
put it in the hands of an officer responsible 
for acquiring the material selected. This 
meant a new Acquisitions Department, 
which was set up by General Order No. 
1188. 

In effect, this order centers in the new 
department all acquisition activities. 
Recommending officers, though they may 
perform duties in other departments— 
usually the Reference Department—re¬ 
port, in their work of recommendation, 
to the director of the Acquisitions Depart¬ 
ment; and all receiving and accessioning 
work is done in the department’s divisions. 
The accessions division was transferred to 
the new department from the Processing 
Department. The functions of the old 
documents division with respect to the 
acquisitions of Government documents 
were transferred to the exchange and gift 
division. (Accessioning functions had pre¬ 
viously been transferred from the docu¬ 
ments division to the accessions division.) 
Selection of material from unsolicited re¬ 
ceipts (copyright deposits, gifts, and ex¬ 
changes) was centered in the department, 


as was allotment of purchase funds, Law 
as well as General. Purchase and acces¬ 
sion searching, formerly functions of the 
catalog preparation and maintenance divi¬ 
sion, were transferred to the order and to 
the exchange and gift divisions, respec¬ 
tively. In addition, the serial record was 
transferred from the Processing Depart¬ 
ment and set up as a division. 

Altogether, the new department is made 
up of a director and his office (eleven em¬ 
ployees), two assistant directors for plan¬ 
ning and operations, and three divisions— 
order, exchange and gift, and serial rec¬ 
ord—the work of which is described by the 
director, Mr. Clapp, as follows: 

The order division (thirty-one employees) has sole 
responsibility for acquisitions where the expendi¬ 
ture of money is involved, for purchase searching, 
and for pricing. The exchange and gift division 
(twenty-eight employees) is responsible for the 
acquisition of material by gift, exchange (including 
the international exchange of government publica¬ 
tions under the Brussels Convention and other 
treaty engagements), various provisions of law, 
and official donation, and for the recording of 
conditional deposits and intramural transfers of 
materials. This division is responsible also for 
bookplating and marking of material received 
bound, for accession searching, and for the prep¬ 
aration and issuance of the Monthly Checklist of 
State Publications. To the serial record division 
(nineteen employees) are sent all serials from what¬ 
ever source (except nongovernmental daily news¬ 
papers) for accessioning record. Besides this 
original accession record, however, the serial 
record maintains the basic and permanent record 
of the Library’s holdings of serials, bound and 
unbound, processed and unprocessed; it enters 
cataloging and classification indicia into bound 
volumes, and its records have displaced the 
shelflist entries for this type of material; it keeps 
the control record of decisions affecting the selec¬ 
tion, retention, distribution, and processing of 
serial publications throughout the Library. 

The establishment of the new depart¬ 
ment coincided with the adoption of a 
new method of reporting important ac¬ 
quisitions. Prior to 1940 important new 
acquisitions were listed in the annual 
report in the chapters then written by 
the chiefs of the various special divisions. 


21 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


The result was, first, that materials not 
the responsibility of any particular spe¬ 
cial division were frequently overlooked; 
second, that materials were announced 
many months, and often as much as a 
year, after acquisition. But, in any case, 
the Annual Report of the Librarian of 
Congress was not, and should not be, a 
book-lover’s intelligencer. It has too 
many statistics to report and too many 
personnel changes to list. We therefore 
decided in the summer of 1943 to report 
on new acquisitions in a supplement to 
the annual report which would be pub¬ 
lished quarterly. The Public Printer ap¬ 
proved the plan as easing somewhat the 
autumnal strain on his presses. Allen 
Tate, our distinguished consultant in 
English poetry, agreed to take on the 
editorial task; and the first issue of the 
Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of 
Current Acquisitions appeared in No¬ 
vember 1943. Its reception has con¬ 
vinced us that a publication such as we 
had in mind and Mr. Tate has realized 
can serve American scholarship. 

THE REFERENCE DEPARTMENT 

The creation of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment differed from the creation of the 
Acquisitions Department and the Proc¬ 
essing Department in that the Acquisi¬ 
tions and Processing departments were 
constructed by affirmative action where¬ 
as the Reference Department evolved. 
There was, it is true, a general order (No. 
964, of June 29, 1940) at the beginning 
of the history of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment; but it did little more than pile up 
some twenty heterogeneous divisions, 
accumulated by the Library over the 
course of haphazard time, and direct the 
then director of the legislative reference 
service, Dr. Evans, and the then super¬ 
intendent of the reading rooms, Mr. 
Mearns, to make a department of them. 
The functions to be performed by the 
new department were, it is true, named: 


reference, book selection, book service, 
and the care and custody of books on the 
shelves. The divisions were named also. 
They were the reading rooms division 
(the main reading room, the annex read¬ 
ing rooms, the study room service, the 
social sciences reference room, the local 
history and genealogy reading room, the 
reading room for the blind, and a pro¬ 
posed science and technology reading 
room), the documents division, the legis¬ 
lative reference service, the periodicals 
division, the rare book collection, the 
manuscripts division, the Orientalia di¬ 
vision, the Semitic division, the Slavic 
division, the Smithsonian division, the 
aeronautics division, the project books 
for the adult blind, the Hispanic founda¬ 
tion, the fine arts division, the music 
division, the maps division, the union 
catalog, the photoduplication service, the 
consultants, and “any consultant services 
or scholarly services which might be set 
up, such as the projected fellowships of the 
Library of Congress.” 

Messrs. Evans and Mearns were told, 
moreover, what results they were ex¬ 
pected to accomplish. In reader service 
and the care and custody of books they 
were to centralize the Library’s opera¬ 
tions, permitting only such exceptions 
as they could not avoid. To help them 
in this labor they were given two new 
officers: a keeper of the collections, 
charged with responsibility for the physi¬ 
cal custody, security, and preservation 
of the Library’s collections (Alvin W. 
Kremer) and a chief of the book service 
(Robert C. Gooch). 

In reference work and book service they 
were told that the new department should 
(i) assign responsibility for reference work 
and book selecting in the various fields of 
knowledge to those officers of the Library 
and members of the Library staff having 
competence in the particular fields. (In 
fields in which no officer possessed particu¬ 
lar competence, interested members of the 


22 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


staff were to be encouraged to participate 
in the work of selection and reference); 
(2) establish a system of routing of refer¬ 
ence problems to the persons to whom 
responsibility for the various fields had 
been assigned; (3) establish a system for 
the initiation of recommendations of book 
purchases by the members of the Library 
staff responsible for the various fields of 
knowledge; (4) assure the systematic 
examination of publications, book re¬ 
views, and special articles in the various 
fields, with a view to the prompt origina¬ 
tion of recommendations for purchase of 
new books in these fields: and (5) provide 
means by which the collections might be 
analyzed with a view to building want- 
lists and developing a rational and af¬ 
firmative policy of book acquisition. 

But beyond these sailing directions and 
this small crew they were given very little 
help by the Librarian. What had hap¬ 
pened in effect was that all units of the 
Library not engaged in processing work 
(Processing Department), in housekeeping 
functions (Administrative Department), 
in copyright work, or in law were set off 
together and called a department. The 
excessive “span of control” which had 
made the Librarian’s life burdensome was 
transferred in large part to the new 
“director” — who, moreover, did not exist, 
since the position requested had not been 
granted by Congress. Moreover, one of 
the divisions transferred was the vast (for 
the Library of Congress) and sprawling 
(for any library) reading rooms division, 
which combined in one organ-within-the- 
organism such disparate functions as book 
service, book custody, circulation within 
and without the Library, and reference 
work both high and low. 

It is not remarkable that the Reference 
Department which resulted was a depart¬ 
ment in name only and that its substantial 
creation was obliged to wait for almost four 
years. Dr. Evans and Mr. Mearns struggled 
manfully. The chief assistant librarian- 


ship, with Dr. Evans in it, was thrown into 
the hopper. The position of reference 
librarian, with Mr. Mearns in occupancy, 
was added as a second in command—but 
with book selection to handle as well. 
The keeper of the collections and the chief 
of the book service labored endless hours. 
The large, diffused, and various staff per¬ 
formed its large, diffused, and various 
duties. But, though much of the greatest 
importance was accomplished, a depart¬ 
ment, conscious of itself as a department 
and working functionally as a department, 
was not evolved. General reference poli¬ 
cies were imposed upon the heterogeneous 
divisions making up the department, and 
reference reports were brought into con¬ 
formity with those policies. Administra¬ 
tive channels which had not previously 
existed were established and administra¬ 
tive relationships set up. But, because the 
new department did not reflect function 
in its organization, a functional organism 
was not created; and it soon became ap¬ 
parent that nothing but a complete re¬ 
consideration and a new start would be 
effective. 

Whether or not the new start could 
have been made sooner than it was is 
extremely doubtful. For one thing, the 
solution of the processing tangle demanded 
and received priority of treatment not 
only in the appropriations committee but 
in the minds of the Library administra¬ 
tion. The situation discovered there was 
manifestly dangerous and could not be 
allowed to continue. A second circum¬ 
stance operating to delay a thoroughgoing 
reorganization of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment was the war. I have not wished to 
emphasize the fact in this report, but 
readers will have noticed that the entire 
reorganization of which I am writing took 
place after the outbreak of the war in 
Europe, and most of it during our partici¬ 
pation in the war. The effect of the war 
on the Library was the effect familiar else¬ 
where: Manpower was lacking, and service 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


23 


demands, though they decreased in num¬ 
ber, increased in difficulty. Moreover, the 
Librarian was drafted for other services 
for better than a year and from time to 
time thereafter. Whether my absence as 
director of O. F. F., as assistant director 
of O. W. I., and as organizer of O. W. I.’s 
London branch was an advantage or a dis¬ 
advantage to the Library of Congress in 
its general operations may well be a matter 
for debate. In terms of the Library’s re¬ 
organization, granted that reorganization 
was necessary, it could only be a retarding 
factor, since reorganization was necessarily 
my responsibility and could not go on 
without me. 

These, however, are excuses. They do 
not dispose of the fact that the real re¬ 
organization of the Library’s vital refer¬ 
ence services was delayed to the winter 
of 1943-44 and General Order No. 1218 
of March 25, 1944. Prior to that date, 
however — in the fall of 1940, to be ex¬ 
act the “ Canons of Service” had been 
worked out in Library conferences, with 
the result that the reorganization, when 
it came, had a philosophy to go on. Since 
the philosophy of library service is some¬ 
what less clear than Kant, it may be 
worth while to brief the reasoning by 
wjiich we arrived at our conclusions. 

At the beginning of our discussion two 
views were advanced- — or perhaps it 
would be fairer to say that participants 
in the discussion were urgently invited 
to have views with reference to two op¬ 
posed positions: One, that a library is a 
kind of machine to drop a book into a 
reader’s hand, the machine having no 
further responsibility or, indeed, inter¬ 
est — except to get the book back; the 
other, that a library is a group of human 
beings who accept a responsibility to 
make any part of the printed record 
available to society, by whatever means 
is most intelligible and most effective, 
the responsibility ending not with the 
mechanical delivery of a book but with 


the identification and production of the 
text or the information needed. 

As between these two positions, there 
seemed, at first, to be unanimous agree¬ 
ment on the part of my associates that 
the second was the more nearly correct. 
Indeed, some of them went so far as to 
suggest that the first definition was the 
old definition of a library and that the 
second was the more modern. But there 
was no disagreement that the second was 
applicable to the Library of Congress. 

Proceeding from this point, an at¬ 
tempt was made to discover what the 
precise obligations of a library of the 
second category were: Particularly, what 
was meant by the statement that a li¬ 
brary accepts a responsibility to “make 
available” pertinent parts of the total 
record. As an extreme position, it was 
suggested that a library, such as the Li¬ 
brary of Congress, might accept an ob¬ 
ligation to publish by radio, by print, 
by near-print, or by other means, those 
materials, of fact and of opinion, which, 
in its best judgment, bore upon the con¬ 
troversial issues which a democratic nation 
faces. Would it be possible for the Li¬ 
brary of Congress to publish material of 
this kind in a form useful to the electorate? 
It was generally agreed that such a pro¬ 
gram would require an amount of time and 
a number of advisers beyond the capacities 
of the Library. 

A more moderate conception of library 
responsibility was next discussed. It was 
suggested that the Library of Congress 
might fulfil its obligations by preparing 
annotated bibliographies and other briefs 
of the record for publication in newspapers 
or by other agencies wishing to use them— 
the Library of Congress accepting respon¬ 
sibility for its selection of authorities and 
for its presentation of the historical record 
It was pointed out that the Library has a 
duty always to present both sides of con¬ 
troversial problems. 

Here there seemed to be a keen sense of 


24 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


the difficulties involved, and retreat was 
suggested to a still more moderate posi¬ 
tion—the position ascribed to another 
great national library—i. e., a limitation 
of the responsibility of the Library to the 
assistance of accredited and qualified 
scholars who might work in the Library 
for scholarly purposes. As to this, how¬ 
ever, there was general agreement that 
the Library of Congress could not fulfil its 
responsibility in so narrow a manner. 
First, it was pointed out that the Library 
would be limiting its reference assistance 
to those who need such assistance least. 
Second, it was pointed out that such as¬ 
sistance to scholars in the production of 
scholarly works to be read by other 
scholars would not result in the publication 
of the essential record to the people at 
the time when the people most had need 
of it. 

At this point it became necessary to 
review our first decision as to the two 
concepts of a library. A medial position 
was suggested: that the principal respon¬ 
sibility of a library is to deliver a book 
into the hands of the man who asks for it 
but, at the same time, to undertake what 
were referred to as “extra-curricular” 
services to certain types of readers, chosen 
on some basis not defined. As to this, it 
was replied that there might be a con¬ 
siderable difference between the notion 
that a library’s responsibilities end with 
the delivery of books, reference services 
being “extra-curricular” adjuncts, and the 
alternative notion that a library’s real and 
essential function is the activity which is 
sometimes referred to as “reference work,” 
the serving-out of books being merely 
incidental to that function. 

Gradually the definition sharpened. It 
was recognized, as a matter of course, that 
the primary obligation of the Library of 
Congress was owed to Congress and that its 
second obligation was the service of officers 
of government charged with the conduct of 
official business. The obligation to the 


Nation as a whole, however, proved more 
difficult to define. 

In an effort to resolve that problem and 
to define the areas of agreement, I tried 
my hand at a draft of “Canons of Service” 
which was circulated for comment on 
September 11, 1940, and which we in¬ 
cluded, in corrected form, in the annual 
report for that fiscal year. The canons do 
not answer the dark and cloudy questions 
discussed during the summer — questions 
which wiser men with more'time to devote 
will, I hope, consider at greater length. 
They do not define the word “library” in 
service terms. They helped, however, to 
orient the department which was to follow 
four years later, and they are therefore 
given in full: 

1. The Library of Congress undertakes for Members 
of the Congress any and all research and reference proj¬ 
ects bearing upon the Library’s collections and required 
by Members in connection with the performance of their 
legislative duties . 

There are no exceptions to this rule so far as the 
Library’s conception of its obligations is con¬ 
cerned. Only a lack of means to provide the 
necessary, and necessarily skilled, staff will justify 
a failure on the Library’s part to meet all such 
demands. 

2. The Library of Congress undertakes for officers 
and departments of government research projects, appro¬ 
priate to the Library, which can be executed by reference 
to its collections, and which the staffs of offices and 
departments are unable to execute. 

These projects are deferred, except in case 
of emergency, to reference projects undertaken 
for Members of the Congress. 

The rules establishing the Library’s reference 
and research obligations to Members of the Con¬ 
gress and officers of government suggest, in turn, 
its reference obligations to other libraries and to 
the public in general. As in the case of its collec¬ 
tions, the reference facilities of the Library are 
facilities created for the use of Members of the 
Congress, etc., as representatives of the people and 
are therefore the facilities of the people. For this 
reason, but subject to the priorities established by 
the greater urgency of the research needs of 
Members of the Congress and officers of Govern¬ 
ment, the reference facilities of the Library are 
available, within appropriate limitations, to mem¬ 
bers of the public acting either through universi¬ 
ties or learned societies or other libraries or di- 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


25 


rectly. The “pool of scholarship” which the 
Library of Congress is obliged to maintain in order 
to perform its obligations to the Congress and to 
the government is, in other words, as much the 
property of the people as its collection of books. 
These facts determine the third rule defining 
the reference objectives of the Library. 

3. The reference staff and facilities of the Library of 
Congress are available to members of the public , uni¬ 
versities , learned societies and other libraries requiring 
service which the Library staff is equipped to give and 
which can be given without interference with services to 
the Congress and other agencies of the Federal Govern¬ 
ment. 

This policy is active as well as passive. Pas¬ 
sively considered it means that reference in¬ 
quiries, and requests for bibliothecal service, 
which cannot be satisfied by other libraries or 
scholarly institutions nearer the inquirer, may 
be submitted to the Library of Congress which 
will respond to them within necessary limita¬ 
tions of time and labor. Actively considered, 
the Library’s policy in this regard means that 
the Library of Congress, as the reference library 
of the people, holds itself charged with a duty to 
provide information to the people with regard 
to the materials they possess in its collections, 
and with an obligation to make its technical 
and scholarly services as broadly useful to the 
people as it can. 

The reorganization of 1944 was carried 
forward on the basis of these canons. It 
was accomplished only after full discussion 
and the greatest possible opportunity for 
criticism and comment. Work began in 
the department in the fall of 1943, and a 
preliminary outline was distributed to the 
professional staff before the December 1, 
1943, meeting of the professional forum. 
A series of discussions was also held with 
division chiefs, and the daily meetings of 
the Librarian’s Conference were devoted 
to the project from time to time over many 
months. 

Broadly speaking, the purpose in view 
was to take the department down and 
reconstruct it in terms of its principal 
functions: (1) custody, (2) circulation, 
and (3) reference, transferring its book- 
selection duties to the new Department 
of Acquisitions, which had been set up 
to receive them. This meant the dissolu¬ 


tion of the reading rooms division—a 
reform long overdue. It meant the unifi¬ 
cation of custodial responsibilities, pre¬ 
viously scattered among the reading rooms 
and the special divisions, and the reaffir¬ 
mation of “the classic organization” of the 
collections which the general order defined 
as having been intended “to make avail¬ 
able, in and through a single classified 
collection, all material which can be so 
organizd and serviced, separate collections 
being maintained only when the nature 
of the material (e. g., manuscripts) or the 
character of the alphabet (e. g., Chinese) 
makes the maintenance of a separate col¬ 
lection unavoidable.” It meant a custo¬ 
dial and delivery service, a loan service, 
and a reference service adapted not only 
to the various categories of reference de¬ 
mands (congressional and other) but to 
the realities of reference inquiries (infor¬ 
mational and scholarly). 

The organization which resulted and its 
relation to the organization which went 
before can best be understood by compar¬ 
ing the pre-reorganization chart (I) with 
the post-reorganization chart (II). 

Here, as in the case of the other depart¬ 
ments, I shall let the director, Mr. Mearns, 
describe the organization and operation 
of his department in detail: 

The legislative reference service. —Only a brief 
account of the legislative reference service is 
necessary. The service existed prior to the 
March reorganization and did not undergo any 
drastic change at that time. Its internal re¬ 
sponsibilities and scope and its relationship to the 
other services were more carefully defined. It 
had been apparent that, previous to the reorgan¬ 
ization, the legislative reference service was not a 
division of the Reference Department in the same 
sense as were, for example, the rare books division 
or the aeronautics division. The legislative 
reference service (sixty-eight employees) supplies 
an overall reference service to Members of 
Congress, with particular emphasis on subjects 
related to proposed or pending legislation. In 
the reorganization this fact became decisive, and 
the legislative reference service was set up as a 
service parallel with the public reference service. 
To be sure, the Library as a whole has compelling 


26 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


CHART I 

Reference Department, Pre-reorganization 



CHART II 

Reference Department, Organization, March, 1944 


Director of the Department 


J 

|- 

Assistant 
[Liaison with 
the Col 

Director 
the Keeper of 
lections) 


Circulation Service 

1. The Stack and Reader Division 

2 . The Serials Division 

3. The Loan Division 


Assistant 
[Liaison with the 
Processing E 

Director 
Acquisitions and 
)epartments] 




Public Reference Service 

1. The General Reference and Bib¬ 

liography Division 

2 . The Aeronautics Division 

3. The Hispanic Foundation 

4. The Manuscripts Division 

5. The Maps Division 

6. The Music Division 

7. The Orientalia Division 

8. The Prints and Photographs 

Division 

9. The Rare Books Division 

10. The Slavic Center, Prospective 


Assistant Director 
[Liaison with the Law 
Library] 


Legislative Reference Service 





























27 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


obligations to perform reference service for 
Members of Congress, but where such work is 
done elsewhere the legislative reference service 
co-ordinates it for congressional use. 

The legislative reference service retains charge 
of the congressional reading room and in so doing 
assembles, charges, and loans materials requested 
by Members of Congress or their families. It 
forwards such charges to the loan division, which 
has over-all responsibility for maintenance of 
records of loans. Under the reorganization the 
legislative reference service will continue to com¬ 
pile and publish indexes to federal and state laws, 
digests of public general bills, and basic data 
studies on matters of legislative concern. 

The circulation service .—From the standpoint of 
administrative units, the circulation service repre¬ 
sents the most drastic departure from the previous 
organization. The custodial and circulation 
services it performs were the scattered responsi¬ 
bility of the former reading rooms division, in¬ 
cluding the government publications reading 
room and many of the special divisions. The 
previous unintegrated divisional structure of the 
Reference Department and the relative autonomy 
of the divisions had resulted in unintegrated and 
unrelated collections. Books were issued and 
loaned from a dozen different divisions, and there 
was no centralized responsibility for records of 
books in use within the Library or of outside 
loans. In terms of service to readers, this situa¬ 
tion was reflected in a regrettably high percentage 
of failures to supply desired books either from the 
central desk in the main reading room or from the 
special divisions; and the reverse side of this 
picture was an interference with reference service 
by the custodial responsibilities of the reading 
room and the special divisions. 

The separation of custodial and circulation 
responsibilities from reference duties does not 
imply any demeaning of the former. Rather, 
by providing a hierarchy of custodial positions 
and duties, it establishes custodianship as a 
definite professional function of librarianship. 
In their reaction against the tradition of Euro¬ 
pean librarianship, American libraries have 
tended to exalt their reference functions and 
undervalue their custodial functions. In this 
country the public library movement created 
and made self-conscious the profession of li¬ 
brarianship, and in great public libraries par¬ 
ticularly the problems of custody are apt to 
receive scant attention. But in the Library of 
Congress, and, no doubt, in other large research 
libraries with Nation-wide demands on their 
resources, the custody and circulation of materials 
becomes a major operation. These materials 


include not only books in the millions but also 
more millions of periodicals, bound and unbound, 
pamphlets, manuscripts, prints, photographs, 
maps, sheet music, slides, etc. It is hoped that 
one of the products of the creation of the circula¬ 
tion service will be a corps of professional curators, 
trained in the custody and administration of the 
Library’s collections. 

The circulation service is made up of three 
newly established divisions: the stack and reader 
division, the serials division, and the loan division. 

The stack and reader division (eighty em¬ 
ployees) issues and delivers material as requested 
for use in the general reading rooms, divisional 
reading rooms, and study rooms and for the 
official use of members of the staff in the divisional 
offices; it collects and reshelves such materials; 
and maintains records of materials in its custody 
and of materials issued and returned. It provides 
study rooms or other special research facilities in 
accordance with established policies and passes 
upon applications for the privilege of access to 
the book stacks. 

The division also has custody of the general 
classified collections and administers the circula¬ 
tion of materials from these collections to readers 
and investigators. It maintains, in accordance 
with standards of custodial care established by 
the keeper of the collections and approved by the 
Librarian, the physical and orderly arrangement 
of materials in the book stacks and in the reference 
collections in the general reading rooms, selecting 
deteriorated materials for rebinding and repair. 
A few collections remain in the custody of special 
divisions, but the trend is definitely and encourag¬ 
ingly toward centralization. Collections of books 
formerly in the custody of the aeronautics divi¬ 
sion, the maps division, the fine arts division, the 
Slavic division, and the Smithsonian division are 
now administered by the stack and reader divi¬ 
sion. Materials such as maps, prints and photo¬ 
graphs, sound recordings, etc., which cannot 
conveniently be integrated with the general 
collections, by reason of their form, remain in the 
custody of the respective divisions concerned with 
them. 

Some idea of the scope of the operations of 
the stack and reader division may be obtained 
from the following statement concerning the 
transfer of positions and personnel. From the 
reading rooms division there were transferred 
to the stack and reader division the stack in¬ 
spectors, the stack attendants, the control room 
attendants, the book distributors, the guards 
and guides, the personnel of the study room 
reference service (with certain specified excep¬ 
tions), the central charge file, the assistant in 


28 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


charge of document collections in the main 
reading room gallery, two clerks, and twelve mes¬ 
sengers. The stack attendant formerly in charge 
of the collections of the Smithsonian division was 
also transferred to the stack and reader division. 

The serials division (forty-five employees) has cus¬ 
tody of certain groups of materials which require, 
or for reasons of convenience are given, reader 
and reference service prior to their addition to 
the general classified collections. Insofar as their 
custody is not allocated to one of the several 
special divisions, the following groups are in¬ 
cluded: periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, Gov¬ 
ernment documents, books in parts, and ephemera 
of various sorts. Such materials represent cus¬ 
todial, circulation, and reference problems in all 
libraries; but in the Library of Congress the prob¬ 
lems are magnified by the sheer bulk of the mate¬ 
rial. With respect to such materials, the func¬ 
tional division as between custody and circulation, 
on the one hand, and reference service, on the 
other, has been deliberately set aside. The se¬ 
rials division maintains a reference service in 
special reading rooms with respect to periodicals, 
Government documents, and newspapers in its 
custody; but this service is (with the specific ex¬ 
ception of documents) subordinate to its custodial 
responsibility, which constitutes its primary 
function. 

Because the preponderance of official docu¬ 
ments are serials and because their treatment 
and service as current publications are, to a 
large extent, comparable with the treatment 
and service of other kinds of periodicals, the 
Government publications reading room, its 
collections, and its staff have been transferred 
from the reading rooms to the serials division. 

The loan division (fifty employees), as its name 
implies, administers all outside loans (including 
loans of books, periodicals, maps, music, prints, 
embossed books, sound recordings, etc.). It 
should be noticed that the principle of centraliza¬ 
tion of administrative responsibility has been 
carried further with respect to outside loans than 
with respect to the custody or issue of books with¬ 
in the Library. The Library of Congress is a 
national library, and officers of Government, as 
well as scholars, confident of its resources, come 
to it or write to it for reference asssistance. A book 
on loan is not available for use, and in wartime 
instant availability assumes heightened import¬ 
ance. The practice of individual and inter- 
library loan has advantages which justify the 
inconvenience it sometimes occasions, but this in¬ 
convenience should be minimized and can be 
minimized only through a centrally administered 
loan service maintaining consolidated loan records. 


The public reference service .—The public 
reference service is made up of the general refer¬ 
ence and bibliography division and nine other 
divisions differentiated from one another in 
terms of subject and regional specialization or in 
terms of the type of material in association with 
which their respective activities are carried on. 
Before proceeding to a description of each divi¬ 
sion in turn, a brief account can be given of the 
common activities which bring them together 
in the public reference service. Public reference 
divisions exist to provide a reference service 
to readers in the Library and, through cor¬ 
respondence, outside the Library; they main¬ 
tain special indexes and reference cata¬ 
logs; they compile bibliographies and guides to 
the collections; and their chiefs function as 
recommending officers in the fields of knowledge 
reflected by their specialization. 

Certain of the divisions, in addition to their 
reference functions, administer special collec¬ 
tions of material not suitable for inclusion in 
the general classified collections of books. The 
manuscripts division, for example, has custody 
of the general collections of manuscripts, tran¬ 
scripts of manuscripts, and photographic re¬ 
productions of manuscripts. It catalogs and 
classifies such material and makes it available 
for use in a reading room which it administers. 
The maps division, the Orientalia division, and 
the prints and photographs division have identi¬ 
cal responsibilities for the types of materials 
with which they are concerned. The rare books 
division is responsible for the custody and 
service of those copies of books which, because 
of their importance to the history of ideas, or 
their contribution to the progress of literature, 
or their provenience, or their association with 
great men and great events, or their monetary 
value, or their condition, require special facili¬ 
ties for their preservation and supervised use. 
The music division maintains custody not only 
of sheet music and sound recordings but of the 
literature of music as well. Standardized cata¬ 
loging and classification techniques have been 
developed to a point which assures the integra¬ 
tion of the diverse materials comprising the 
collection and which obviates the necessity of 
custodial separation on the basis of form. More¬ 
over, so much of the literature of music con¬ 
tains the only versions of the music itself that 
it would be practically and administratively 
impossible to distinguish between the two cate¬ 
gories. 

The general reference and bibliography 
division was created by combining the former 
division of bibliography with the reference 


29 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


personnel and functions of the former reading 
rooms division a change first suggested in 
early 1940 in the Statement of the Librarian of 
Congress in Support of the Supplemental Estimates. 
As now constituted, the general reference and 
bibliography division (fifty employees) is organized 
to respond to all public reference requests which 
do not require the attention of the special divi¬ 
sions, whether such requests are received in per¬ 
son, by telephone, or by mail. 

All consultants and special projects, which 
formerly functioned under the immediate super¬ 
vision of the director of the department, are now 
administratively assigned to the general reference 
and bibliography division. This provides a 
means of relating individual or temporary special 
activities to the general and sustained reference 
work of the Library. 

The relation between specialized and general 
service in this instance is analogous to the rela¬ 
tion between specialists in medicine and the 
general practitioner. The general practitioner 
does not treat disease in general but rather those 
specific diseases which do not fall within one or 
another of the specialties or which fall within 
several of them. Further, the knowledge and 
skill of the competent general practitioner is such 
that he can treat the average case of many diseases 
which do fall within the specialties; in most 
such cases it would be foolish and extravagant to 
employ the time and talent of a specialist. 

No library, no matter how rich and favored, 
can hope to provide a staff of specialists to cover 
the whole field of knowledge. Nor can the inter¬ 
ests and problems of readers be divided into neat 
compartments without overlapping or remainder. 
Current developments are apt to have little regard 
for yesterday’s academic specializations. For 
example, the learned world in America is divided 
and organized on the basis of subject specialization. 
In the present emergency the nation has discov¬ 
ered that it needs not only subject specialists but 
area specialists as well. Methods of training re¬ 
gional specialists have had to be improvised. The 
regional bibliographies prepared by nonspecialists 
in the general reference and bibliography division 
have contributed something to that training. 

The effect of the reorganization on the special 
divisions is to free them for their proper work. 
The aeronautics division (five employees) has been 
relieved of its former custodial responsibilities 
and encouraged to undertake a more elaborate 
bibliographical program in connection with the 
Nation-wide reference service it renders. The 
Hispanic foundation (eight employees), relieved 
of custody of its materials and separated from its 
archive of Hispanic culture, which, as a photo¬ 


graph collection, becomes a part of the prints and 
photographs division, is free for its proper refer¬ 
ence function of developing and co-ordinating 
the Hispanic activities of the Library and foster¬ 
ing cultural interchange with Hispanic nations. 
The foundation will continue to prepare special 
bibliographies, guides, indexes, and other publi¬ 
cations appropriate to its service. 

The manuscripts division (seventeen employees) 
has not been changed internally by the reorgani¬ 
zation. However, its newly established position 
within the public reference service serves to define 
more precisely its primary functions in the field of 
American civilization. 

The maps division (nine employees) is respon¬ 
sible for the custody and service of the collections 
of maps and atlases. The books formerly in the 
custody of this division have been transferred to 
the general collections in the custody of the stack 
and reader division. As in the case of aeronautics, 
the maps division, relieved of part of its custodial 
responsibility, is free to develop an extensive 
reference service in the fields of geography and 
cartography. 

The music division (sixteen employees), like the 
manuscripts division, remains essentially un¬ 
changed in the reorganization. It is relieved, 
however, of the task of maintaining a loan service 
of its materials. 

The Orientalia division (fourteen employees), 
formerly the Asiatic division, is responsible for the 
custody and service of all materials written or 
printed in oriental languages (including Chinese, 
Japanese, Semitic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, etc.). 
The former Semitic division has been made a 
section of the Orientalia division. The responsi¬ 
bility of the Hispanic foundation for fostering 
cultural relations with the Hispanic countries is 
matched by a similar responsibility which the 
Orientalia division has of fostering cultural inter¬ 
change with oriental nations. 

The renaming of the prints and photographs 
division (eleven employees) represents an attempt 
to indicate the true responsibilities of the former 
fine arts division with regard to graphic materials 
in its custody. Books on art in the custody of the 
former fine arts division have been transferred to 
the general collections. Because of the impor¬ 
tance of prints and photographs in connection 
with exhibits, the exhibits office has been trans¬ 
ferred to the prints and photographs division, and 
exhibits have been made the special responsibility 
of an assistant chief of this division. Although 
this assistant chief becomes, in effect, the executive 
officer responsible for exhibits, the responsibility 
for initiating projects for exhibits and assisting in 
the assembly and preparation of materials con- 


30 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


tinues to be a function of the chiefs of Reference 
and other divisions. 

In additiqn to custodial responsibility, the rare 
books division (nine employees) maintains a 
reference service appropriate to its collections. 
Most requests for reference service which neces¬ 
sitate the consultation of incunabula, sixteenth- 
and seventeenth-century publications, American 
imprints before 1820, the principal editions of 
important historical, scientific, and literary works, 
first editions, limited editions, de luxe editions, 
specially and extra-illustrated editions, fine 
bindings, unique copies, the literature of the 
typographic and book arts, and other collections 
of rare books are directed to it. 

The Slavic center soon to be established will 
be modeled on the Hispanic foundation. It will 
render reference service in respect to the Li¬ 
brary’s Slavic collections and will foster cultural 
interchange with the Slavic countries. 

There remain several former divisions of the 
Reference Department which have not been 
accounted for in the above statement. Of these, 
the photoduplication service has been trans¬ 
ferred to the administrative offices under the 
direction of the chief assistant librarian. The 
union catalog has been transferred to the Proc¬ 


essing Department, where it obviously belongs; 
and the service for the blind, being a loan serv¬ 
ice, has been made a section of the loan divi¬ 
sion. The fiscal and administrative sections of 
books for the adult blind have been transferred 
to the administrative offices under the chief 
assistant librarian. The former book selection 
and reference work of this division is now the 
responsibility of the public reference service. 
The reference service formerly conducted by 
the Smithsonian division is now the responsi¬ 
bility of a consultantship in the history of science. 
As a reflection of our experience in the operation 
of a science and technology reading room, and 
responsive to demands upon our collections in 
those fields, plans for the future anticipate the 
creation of a science division which will include 
not only this consultantship but the aeronautics 
division and other scientific reference services, 
existing or projected. 

A summary of the department’s func¬ 
tions and the units by which they are 
performed was prepared for the use of 
the Library staff. Since it gives a con¬ 
venient over-all view of the organization, 
it is reproduced here. 


’the stack and reader division 


A. The department maintains custody of— 

1. The general collections (exclusive of law, but including 
Hispanic materials previously in the custody of the 
Hispanic foundation, the proceedings and transactions 
of learned societies and academies formerly in the cus¬ 
tody of the Smithsonian division; the literature of 
geography previously in the custody of the division of 
maps; aeronautical publications previously in the cus¬ 
tody of the aeronautics division; Slavic materials pre¬ 
viously in the custody of the Slavic division) through 

2. Manuscripts (including transcripts and photographic 
reproductions of manuscripts) through 

3. Rare books (including microfilm reproductions 
printed materials) through 

4. Prints and photographs through 

5. Maps and atlases (including topographic views) through}the maps division 

6. Music and the literature of music through }the music division 

7. Embossed books and sound books for the blind through}the loan division 

8. Current periodicals, documents, pamphlets, and 
ephemera; and newspapers, current and noncurrent, 
through 

9. Orientalia through 


of 


the manuscripts division 


the rare books division 


}the prints and photographs division 


the serials division 


10. Microfilms in general through 


}the division of Orientalia 

the microfilm reading room in the rare 
books division 




REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


31 


the manuscripts division 


B. The department processes materials* as follows: 

1. Prints and photographs through [the prints and photographs division 

2. Manuscripts (including transcripts and photocopies of] 
manuscripts) through 

3. Maps and atlases through Jthe maps division 

4. Embossed books and talking books for the blind through j the Service for the blind section of the 

J loan division 

5. Materials in Chinese, Japanese, Indie, and other Eastern] 

languages through j the dlvlslon of Orientals 

C. The department circulates materials to readers — 

1. In the general reading rooms and study rooms through ) the stack and reader division 

the special divisions above named and 
through the microfilm reading room 
in the rare books division 


2. In the reading rooms of the special divisions above 
named through 

3. Outside the Library buildings through 

D. The department gives reference service— 

1. To Members of Congress — 

(a) In all matters relating to legislation through 

( b ) In all other matters 


Jthe loan division 


Jthe legislative reference servicef 
JSee below 


2. To investigators and general readers — 

(a) In the history and topography of the United States 

(i) By manuscripts, transcripts of manuscripts, photo-1 the manuscripts division and the in¬ 
reproductions of manuscripts and similar source > cumbent of the chair of American 

materials through j history 

(ii) By pictorial materials illustrative of American life] . . . , ..... 

k jthe prints and photographs division 

(iii) By maps through Jthe maps division 

(iv) By rare printed Americana through Jthe rare books division 

(v) By other printed materials (including local history] the general reference and bibliography 

and genealogy) through J division 

(,b ) In Hispanic history through Jthe Hispanic foundation 

M In Far Eastern ’ Indic ’ and Near EaStern histOTy ]the division of Orientalia 
through J 

' the Slavic center (which is to be 
created) 


( d) In Slavic history through 


( e ) In Netherlands history through 


J the Netherlands studies unit 


, , , , / ,1 the general reference and bibliography 

(f) In history-general, national and local (except the division or one of the ial ional 

history of the United States)—through units J 


(g) In geography and cartography through 


Jthe maps division 


* All processing procedures followed by divisions of the Reference Department are subject to the approval and revision of the 
director of the Processing Department. 

t The legislative reference service is available only to Members of Congress. . . .. . . . , 

t The special regional units are: the Hispanic foundation, the Slavic center, the division of Orientalia (consisting of Chinese, 
Japanese, Indic, and Semitic sections and the provisional Iranian section), and the Netherlands studies unit. 




32 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


D. The department gives reference service—Continued 
( h ) In religion and philosophy through 


(0 In political science, economics, and sociology through 


( the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division or one of the special 
regional units 

the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division, the serials division 
► (and its government publications 
section), or one of the special re¬ 
gional units 


(j) In population and demography through } the c / nsus library P J° ieCt of th <=g eneral 

J reference and bibliography division 

} the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division, or one of the special 
regional units 

(/) In music and the literature of music (including] ..... 

American folk song and sound recording) through J* emusic lvlslon 

(m) In the graphic arts (including fine prints and the] 

literature of the fine arts, together with the iconography , . , , , 

and photographic record of the life of the people of the the prmtS and P h °‘°« ra P hs 
United States) through J 

I the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division and its consultant 
in poetry in English, the rare books 
division, or one of the special regional 
units 


(o) In aeronautics through 


( p ) In natural sciences through 


}the aeronautics division 

I the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division and its consultant 
in the history of science (Jefferson 
Room) 


(q) In applied sciences (technology) through 

(r) In military and naval science through 


the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division (Jefferson Room) 

Ithe general reference and bibliography 
J division (Jefferson Room) 


I the general reference and bibliog- 
(f ) In bibliography and library science through raphy division, or any of the special 

j divisions 

(/) In incunabula, history of printing, private presses, and] 

editiones principes through jthe rare books division 


(u) In periodicals and newspapers in general through } the serials division 

(v) In manuscripts in general through } the manuscripts division 


ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS 

An account of the regrouping and re¬ 
organization of the several administra¬ 
tive services and offices of the Library 
could be made as long as it would in¬ 
evitably be dull. Since, however, it was 
the inadequacy of the fiscal services 


which most impressed outside surveyors 
of the Library, such as the representa¬ 
tives of the Bureau of the Budget, and 
since the lack of an adequate personnel 
office and a considered personnel policy 
was a continuing annoyance through 
three years and more, some account of 



REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


33 


reorganization in this general field is 
essential. It could be summed up, in 
terms of the grouping of the units in¬ 
volved, by saying that they were first 
combined in an Administrative Depart¬ 
ment (General Order No. 962 of June 
28, 1940) and then transferred, when the 
Administrative Department disappeared 
and the chief assistant librarian took 
over his proper duties as general execu¬ 
tive officer, to the office of the chief as¬ 
sistant librarian (General Order No. 
1190 of July 5, 1943). But though this 
summary account would take care of the 
secretary’s office (ten employees), the sup¬ 
ply office (four employees), the mail and 
delivery service (fourteen employees), the 
office of the superintendent of Library 
buildings and grounds (two-hundred and 
eighty-six employees), and the disbursing 
office (seven employees), none of which 
were materially altered internally, and 
though it would also suffice, perhaps, for 
the photoduplication service (ten employ¬ 
ees) and the division of books for the adult 
blind (twelve employees), both of which 
were added to the chief assistant librar¬ 
ian’s cares when he took over his execu¬ 
tive duties, it would not account ade¬ 
quately for changes in the accounts office 
(six employees) and the personnel office 
(twenty-two employees). Nor would it 
cover the publications office (one em¬ 
ployee) and the information office (two em¬ 
ployees), which had not previously existed. 

Of these latter it is enough to say that 
each performs the duties which would 
be expected of its name. One handles 
stocks of Library publications and the 
like. The other supplies information to 
the public through the press and other¬ 
wise. The new duties of the accounts 
office and the personnel office must, 
however, be spelled out at greater length. 

Accounts office .—General Order No. 
962 supplied an officer the Library had 
lacked in the past and had badly needed: 
a budget officer. The administrative as¬ 


sistant as director of the department was 
to act as budget officer of the Library 
supervising the preparation of budget 
estimates, developing programs of budg¬ 
eting expenditures, and co-ordinating 
work within these programs. 

To supply the administrative assistant 
with budgetary information and to im¬ 
pose needed controls on expenditures, 
a more active and modern accounts of¬ 
fice was necessary. It was provided by 
the same general order. The accounts 
office was given authority for the main¬ 
tenance of budgetary control through 
allotments made by the administrative 
assistant and was authorized to exercise 
accounting control over the receipt and 
expenditure of appropriated, gift, and 
trust funds and the requisitioning of 
cash. It was also to examine and to ap¬ 
prove for payment all pay rolls and 
vouchers, to examine the disbursing of¬ 
ficer’s accounts current prior to the Li¬ 
brarian’s approval, and to prepare re¬ 
ports and statistics needed for adminis¬ 
trative and budgetary planning. 

At the same time, new and modern 
procedures were worked out for the ac¬ 
counts office with the aid and advice of 
representatives of the general accounting 
office. The accounts now maintained by 
the accounts office comprise a general 
ledger for appropriated, gift, and trust 
funds and for the funds of the Library 
of Congress trust fund board, as well as 
an allotment ledger for appropriated, 
gift, and trust funds. Allotments are 
made by the budget officer to the various 
departments and divisions of the Library 
authorized to incur obligations: the Ac¬ 
quisitions Department (formerly the 
accessions division), the card division, 
books for the adult blind, the Copyright 
Office, the mail, music, personnel, photo¬ 
duplication, publications, and supply 
offices, and the superintendent of Li¬ 
brary buildings and grounds. The ac¬ 
counts office prepares monthly statements 


34 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


for the various divisions reflecting the 
status of funds under all allotments. 

Prior to July 1, 1940, there were a 
number of divisions of the Library han¬ 
dling collections of moneys. At present 
there are two: the secretary’s office, which 
receives remittances on account of card 
sales, sale of photo-duplications, gifts, 
and miscellaneous transactions, and the 
Copyright Office, which, in accordance 
with the act of March 4, 1909, receives 
and deposits all copyright fees. 

Accounts are maintained on an incum¬ 
brance basis, and all financial transactions 
are adjusted to this basis. Only those 
officers to whom funds are allotted may 
incur obligations, and then only to the 
extent of their allotments and subject to 
other necessary limitations. No account 
is acceptable for payment unless it appears 
that a proper statement of the obligation 
was entered in the books of the accounts 
office at the time of its incurrence, nor is 
the disbursing officer authorized to make 
payment until the account is approved for 
payment by the accounts officer. 

The general effect of these changes has 
been to separate certifying responsibility 
from auditing responsibility. Formerly 
the office of the chief clerk certified ac¬ 
counts and audited its own certifications. 
Now operating officers certify and the 
accounts office audits. The new prac¬ 
tice has made for sense and simplicity, 
as well as for safety. Documents are now 
signed, wherever possible, by officers 
having personal knowledge of the facts 
to which they put their names; and the 
meaningless authentication of forms by 
officers whose signatures are necessarily 
mere formalities has disappeared. 

Personnel office .—When the chief clerk’s 
office was abolished in June 1940, and the 
Administrative Department established, 
the personnel section of the chief clerk’s 
office became the personnel office of the 
Library with a director of personnel at its 
head. It was given responsibility for 


interviewing applicants and for filing and 
classifying applications. It was to main¬ 
tain personnel records, including those 
formerly maintained in the office of the 
superintendent of Library buildings and 
grounds. It was directed to co-operate 
actively with the Civil Service Commission 
in classification matters. It was assigned 
responsibility for the execution of approved 
personnel policies. It was charged with 
the duty of hearing grievances and han¬ 
dling appeals from efficiency ratings and 
decisions as to classification. The Li¬ 
brary’s emergency room and the nurse 
were placed under the supervision of its 
director. 

The duties of the office, broadly de¬ 
scribed in 1940, were more precisely de¬ 
fined by General Order No. 1191 of July 
7, 1943, issued when the administrative 
units of the Library, including personnel, 
were transferred to the office of the chief 
assistant librarian. By this latter order 
the personnel office became responsible, 
under the direction of the chief assistant 
librarian, for the full personnel manage¬ 
ment of the Library, including all mat¬ 
ters relating to recruitment, placement, 
classification, employee relations, griev¬ 
ances, training, health, safety, pay rolls, 
efficiency ratings. It is responsible not 
only for the maintenance of central per¬ 
sonnel records of leave, retirement, and 
employee status but also for the study 
and development of new policies and 
procedures as they become necessary. 

Reorganization in the personnel field 
was not limited, however, to the admin¬ 
istrative organization of the office. It 
extended to personnel policy as well. 
Library unions were recognized and en¬ 
couraged as valuable instruments of good 
administration. A promotions policy, call¬ 
ing for the posting of vacancies, was 
worked out in co-operation with Library 
unions and staff members. A grievance 
procedure, which has been widely and 
favorably commented on in the govern- 


35 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


ment, was developed in extended con¬ 
versations in my office between representa¬ 
tives of the unions, representatives of the 
staff generally, and administrative officers. 
A staff advisory committee was set up at 
the suggestion of union representatives 
and has functioned effectively for two years 
as a channel for employee proposals and 
criticisms and as an originator of admin¬ 
istrative suggestions of its own. A pro¬ 
fessional forum meets once a month under 
the chairmanship of the Librarian in his 
professional, rather than his official, ca¬ 
pacity to hear accounts of Library opera¬ 
tions and to discuss the central unsolved 
problem of a librarian’s work—The cata¬ 
log (or other) control of the constantly 
increasing mass of printed and near- 
printed material. 

These latter innovations are parts of 
a general pattern of development which 
one will approve or disapprove as he 
approves or disapproves government by 
discussion. There are those, of course, 
who disapprove of it—and not all of 
them live in totalitarian states. Men of 
certain temperaments find talk annoy¬ 
ing—particularly talk in public enter¬ 
prise. Talk, they say, wastes time. And 
they are right, of course. But talk, kept 
within proper limits, can save time also 
and can gain what time alone might lose. 
In any event, my colleagues and I— 
most of my colleagues, at least—believe 
firmly in government by discussion and 
believe, further, that experience has jus¬ 
tified our belief. We conduct the Li¬ 
brary’s central administration through 
the Librarian’s Conference, a daily meet¬ 
ing of department heads and principal 
administrative officers which debates pol¬ 
icy decisions and in which principal 
administrative assignments are made. 

Final responsibility for decision is still, 
of course, the Librarian’s, as it must be 
by law; but conference discussions insure 
a hearing for all points of administrative 
view and keep the Library’s various offi¬ 


cers informed of each other’s activities, 
with the result that administrative inter¬ 
changeability becomes a practical possi¬ 
bility rather than a paper theory. No officer 
of the Library of Congress feels that he and 
he alone can do his job. Others can do 
and have done it. Mr. Clapp, originally 
a reference man, ran the Administrative 
Department for three years and now heads 
the Acquisitions Department. Dr. Evans, 
originally head of legislative reference and 
later head of the Reference Department, 
is now, as chief assistant librarian, the 
director of the administrative services pre¬ 
viously run by Mr. Clapp. Dr. Hanke, 
whose principal responsibility as director 
of the Hispanic foundation has been to 
foster sound relations with the cultural 
and learned institutions of the other Ameri¬ 
can Republics, is assistant director of the 
Reference Department in charge of pub¬ 
lic reference. Administrative officers of 
the Library have been warned that they 
are to move from department to depart¬ 
ment to insure the Library of Congress 
against the academic isolationism which 
has had such harmful effects in American 
universities and, through the universities, 
on American education. I hope they be¬ 
lieve the warning was seriously intended. 

Government by discussion is not, how¬ 
ever, limited to the Librarian’s Conference. 
Both the Processing and Acquisitions de¬ 
partments have committees, under the 
chairmanship of their directors, on the 
policies of their operations, the members 
of which include the principal officers of 
other units concerned in, or affected by, 
their work. Bibliographical and other 
publications are planned by a committee 
under the chairmanship of Dr. Hanke. 
And an effort was made before the war — 
an effort which we hope to renew when 
the war is over — to plan the relation of the 
Library of Congress with the learned world 
and particularly with other libraries 
through, and with the advice of, a group 
of scholars, librarians, and lovers of books, 


36 


REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 


whom we have called, in their informally 
corporate capacity, the “Librarian’s Coun¬ 
cil.” 

I should like to end a paper, which is 
already far too long, on this theme. What¬ 
ever else our reorganization has accom¬ 
plished—and I hope and believe it has 
provided a sensible, orderly, and manage¬ 
able structure, strong enough to support 
the great future of which the Library of 
Congress is so manifestly capable—what¬ 
ever else the reorganization of the Library 


has accomplished, it has given, I trust, an 
increasing number of men and women the 
sense of participating creatively and re¬ 
sponsibly in a work which all of them may 
well feel proud to share. 

If it has done that, I shall feel that my 
five years as Librarian of Congress, meager 
as their accomplishment must necessarily 
seem by comparison with the great decades 
which went before, were not without their 
value to an institution I have learned not 
only to respect but love. 

0 040 051 170 6 


U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1947 



